Not a sentence a race engineer or a Formula One fan expects to hear but they were the words that came out of Red Bull driver Max Verstappen’s mouth during the final free practice ahead of of the Singapore Grand Prix.
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Hamilton was a massive 0.704 seconds slower than Rosberg after a hard qualifying session, befitting of what has been a troubled weekend throughout.
Defending champion Lewis Hamilton, who holds a two-point advantage over Rosberg at the top of the drivers’ standings, could only manage third after a couple of errors in the first sector of his final flying lap left him more than 0.7 secs adrift.
Hamilton followed Friday’s pattern of overshooting his braking points when using the softest compound tire, and his best time was 1.5 seconds off Rosberg.
However, race stewards are looking at the possibility Perez did not slow enough for yellow caution flags in second qualifying. Ricciardo agreed. “There will be some curveballs I’m sure tomorrow with safety cars and whatnot but yeah, at least we’re at the pointy end”, said the Australian.
His quickest lap of one minute and 42.584 seconds, at a circuit where he has failed to finish on the podium since the very first staged here in 2008, will leave Hamilton scratching his head.
“It wasn’t clear in qualifying how we would stack up against Red Bull, so I really had to give it everything and pull it out of the bag, which is cool”, Rosberg added of his pole-setting lap. And with the race won from the front row on six of the previous eight meetings and with only 11 on-track passes at last year’s meeting, he is now in the best position to dictate proceedings, with his first pole at the circuit.
“It was one of my top three laps ever”.
“We expected other teams to do it as well”, he said. That will allow Ricciardo and Verstappen to run longer into the race than Rosberg and Hamilton, which could put them in strong positions after the first pit stops.
Last year’s victor Sebastian Vettel will start from the back of the grid, the German complaining over the radio of an anti-rollbar issue in the first qualifying session with his Ferrari team unable to fix the auto in time to set a fast lap.
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“If you don’t feel comfortable in the auto around this track, it’s very hard”. The same can be said for Jenson Button, who will start only 13th on Sunday after his auto stopped on the track in the closing stages of Q2. He will start behind the two Manors, Jolyon Palmer, Felipe Nasr and Kevin Magnussen, who also dropped out in Q1.
