The final standings, especially in P2, are potentially misleading due to the fact that three elite drivers, and Singapore masters in Hamilton, Vettel and Ricciardo, made mistakes on their flying laps.
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The tight, twisty and bumpy nature of the Marina Bay street circuit largely cancels out Mercedes’ speed advantage over chief rivals Red Bull and Ferrari, and recent history indicates those F1 rivals should thrive this weekend. The Ferrari driver posting a best of 1m46.287s. However, while Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg were 0.8s adrift of Verstappen’s benchmark, they both set their fastest times on the soft tyre, the slowest compound available this weekend, a pace described by Martin Brundle as “ominous” for the rest of the field. Manor’s Esteban Ocon rounded off the timing screens a full three seconds down, though he was lucky to return his auto to the garage in one piece after clouting the wall on two occasions at the end of his ultra-soft qualifying simulation.
Red Bull Racing team principal Christian Horner believes that Liberty Media’s takeover of Formula 1 “could be a great thing” for the sport in the United States.
Ricciardo was bullish about Red Bull’s prospects this weekend, given the strong parallels with Monaco. When we started off previous year it was clear where we wanted to go, bring Ferrari back to the top.
“I don’t believe in much, but if there is a little bit of karma or whatever, I’d like to think I will get my Monaco win back somewhere and Singapore is a track which I will look to”, he said. Fail to win here, and the Italian team will be staring at the very real prospect of another winless season to match 2014.
Carlos Sainz and Daniil Kvyat showed some promising pace in the Toro Rosso after two lacklustre race weekends in Spa-Francorchamps and Monza, finishing the session seventh and eighth.
“If we get everything right we have a good chance tomorrow to position the auto well”.
“Mercedes had an off year last year but you can’t guarantee that will happen again”. “But a lot of work went into understanding that”.
Despite this, Button pointed out that the challenges of the night race could lead to a Red Bull win.
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“We were closing the gap previous year but unfortunately that gap to the top is still there, sometimes bigger, sometimes smaller but still there”.
