Nico Rosberg took a superb pole position at the Singapore Grand Prix as Lewis Hamilton was demoted to third by Red Bull’s Daniel Ricciardo. “So for sure he is going to be a threat, especially with that supersoft tyre”.
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Hamilton has endured a problematic and scruffy weekend, with his form arguably a cause and effect dynamic stemming from his lack of track time in Practice Two on Friday when a fault on his W07 vehicle cost him precious lap time.
Red Bull Racing’s Daniel Ricciardo surpassed Hamilton in Q3, joining Rosberg on the front row, with a time of 1 minute and 43.115 seconds.
Asked if he was anxious about the Red Bull employing a different strategy, Rosberg said: “Worried, no, but I will be keeping an eye on him”.
And despite posting their best efforts on the faster ultrasoft tyre compound, Red Bull’s promising performance in the first practice session of the weekend will provide them with hope that they could take the fight to Hamilton and his Mercedes team-mate Nico Rosberg this weekend.
Hamilton, who holds a slender two-point advantage over Rosberg, was a crushing seven tenths of a second slower than his Mercedes team-mate on Saturday.
Red Bull were faster than Mercedes when the teams did their main race-preparation work on full tanks of fuel in second practice on Friday. “We expected other teams to do it as well”.
Red Bull’s Max Verstappen was fourth, but last year’s victor Sebastian Vettel had a qualifying nightmare in his Ferrari, as a broken anti-roll bar relegated him to the back row of the grid. “I would say we are surprised we are the only ones”.
“It was always the plan”. He can ill afford another one from third place in Singapore. The championship leader had a tough time in Singapore in the practise races, in which he completed the final session at the seventh position after retiring earlier due to mechanical problems. How it will pan out tomorrow, we’ll see, I have no idea and I’m not really interested on how they will run it.
Asked if the main target was to guarantee a two-stop rather than three-stop race, Horner said: “I think you’ve got to be flexible”.
Ricciardo, who has already missed out on two wins this season after team errors in Spain and Monaco back in May, said he was keen to grab what might be his last chance of a victory this season. So far we don’t really know what happened, initially I thought it was at the front, but then it felt like the rear bar had broken.
“I think Nico did some running but our cars are set up a little bit different”.
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“Hopefully we can stay out of trouble and get that victory”.
