Mercedes’ Nico Rosberg will start the Singapore Airlines Singapore Grand Prix in pole position after clocking a qualifying time of 1min 42.584sec.
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Two years ago, Nico Rosberg came to Singapore as the overall leader of Formula 1’s drivers’ championship, but was dethroned by teammate Lewis Hamilton when the Briton won at the Marina Bay street circuit, and went on to claim his second world crown.
While it was not a straightforward day for a Mercedes team which has dominated the sport for the best part of three seasons, they will be relieved to be back on top, 12 months after they were mysteriously off the pace here.
“We made improvements for qualifying through practice but we are still trying to find stuff with the vehicle”.
Ricciardo found six-tenths of a second on his final lap to jump up to second ahead of Hamilton, who paid the price for a mistake at Turn 1 to finish third and missed out on his 100th front-row start in F1 in the process.
However, Hamilton will be concerned and is on the back foot after Red Bull’s Max Verstappen set the quickest time in FP1.
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.
Esteban Gutierrez finished the session in fourteenth, whilst a half-spin for Romain Grosjean saw the second Haas driver slide into the barrier at turn fourteen, bringing out the yellow flags late on in Q2. “We are wasting time”.
“The difference with this venue is it plays a little more to our strengths than some of the previous races”, Red Bull team principal Christian Horner told reporters after practice. “Nico did a great job and he showed the potential of the auto”.
“We are a bit surprised we are the only ones (on that tire strategy)”, Ricciardo said. “Let’s see. I’m not going to put too much pressure on myself or them for this weekend but I think deep down we obviously want to win”. But the auto felt good, we are more or less there and we had a good start to the weekend. At a circuit where track position could hold the key, the starts could become a crucial factor that decides the outcome of the race.
The line-up for the weekend was: Mercedes – Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg.
“I don’t know what happened under braking”, a winded Grosjean said. In order to allow marshals to clear the debris from the track, the cars filtered back to the pits but as they did so they were were joined by an unusual visitor.
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Another unusual obstacle then presented itself, as Verstappen narrowly avoided colliding with a large lizard as it made its way across the track. He was in better spirits during the final practice as he laughed over the team radio about nearly hitting a large monitor lizard that scuttled across the circuit. Completing the top ten were Toro Rosso’s Carlos Sainz and Williams’ Valtteri Bottas.
