Formula One acquired an exotic addition to its list of wildlife hazards on Saturday after a large monitor lizard wandered onto the Singapore Grand Prix circuit during final practice.
Advertisement
Hamilton, who is only two points ahead of his Mercedes teammate in the overall standings, was a huge 0.704 seconds behind the pace-setter.
Max Verstappen, Ricciardo’s Red Bull team-mate, came in fourth, 0.213 seconds behind the Australian, and just ahead of Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen.
Vettel and Ferrari had hoped to take the fight to Mercedes and Red Bull in qualifying but the German was soon in trouble, with a suspension failure forcing him to three-wheel through Singapore’s corners.
Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen qualified fifth but teammate Sebastian Vettel starts last after his vehicle had an anti-roll bar failure in the Q1 session. “For sure it was one of my top three laps ever so happy with that, it really went well and at times it wasn’t clear in qualifying how we were going to stack up against Red Bull for example, because they were very quick on the super-soft in Q2 for example so I knew I had to give it everything and really pull one out of the bag, which was cool, a great feeling”.
“It hasn’t been my weekend so far”, he said. That will allow them greater flexibility of strategy at a venue that has had safety vehicle periods in all of its previous races.
“It was a good lap on the first run and then I had to try a bit too much to go faster and it didn’t pay out”.
Red Bull, who lived up to the pre-qualifying predictions by proving to be Mercedes’ nearest challengers, will employ a different tyre strategy in the race which could make for a fascinating battle.
“We have created a good opportunity by starting on the front row, and our race pace has been good (in practice)”.
“It might be a case of damage limitation in the race, but let’s see what we can do”. I wanted to come in but we chose to stay out and then we came in because it was just hopeless.
“Yes, it’s stopped”, the Briton lamented over the team radio.
Force India’s Nico Hulkenberg and Sergio Perez qualified eighth and 10th, separated by McLaren’s Fernando Alonso. However, Rosberg is not too anxious about strategy after seeing how Mercedes solved last year’s problems.
Advertisement
“We qualified on the supersofts, and we will start the race on that tyre”.
