Nico Rosberg of Mercedes on Saturday got the pole position for Singapore Grand Prix in qualifying session with the week’s fastest time of 1 minute and 42.584 seconds.
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Red Bull’s Daniel Ricciardo would lay down a solid qualifying time on the Marina Bay circuit – and the Aussie would be able to finish in second on the timesheets.
Mercedes boss Toto Wolff says the world champions have “failed” Lewis Hamilton in Singapore.
Rosberg will be helped by the fact that the overtaking opportunities at the second night race of the season on 18 September will be minimum. “I’m very disappointed”, said Vettel, who was the champion of the race past year.
With not enough time to fix the component, and his pace not good enough to make it through to Q2, Vettel was dead last and will start Sunday’s race from the back of the grid.
“Hopefully tomorrow, I can try and at least get one step up ahead to give that front row for the team”.
“I’ve kind of been on the back foot all year long so there’s no real difference to me”, said Hamilton. “Then we chose to pit to try and fix it but there was no time to do it”.
Dutch teenager Max Verstappen will start alongside Hamilton after setting the fourth fastest time for Red Bull, with the Ferrari of Kimi Raikkonen rounding out the top five.
The shuffle set up a thrilling finale as it cranked up the pressure on Rosberg, who had been largely been untroubled out in front, as Red Bull also opted to pit Ricciardo for fresh tyres. The Finn finished fifth on Saturday with a best lap of 1:43.540s.
Sebastian Vettel knows he is in for a tough race at the Singapore Grand Prix after a disastrous qualifying session left the Ferrari driver last on the grid.
Ferrari have made a decision to give Vettel a brand new power unit and gearbox overnight, effectively penalty free, and the German is still hopeful that he can have a good race on Sunday with a lot of new tyre sets available to him.
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454 sec slower than Rosberg and trailing behind the Force India of Nico Hulkenberg and the Toro Rosso of Daniil Kvyat.
