F1: Red Bull’s Daniel Ricciardo is on track to claim his second career pole position at Marina Bay Street Circuit in Singapore.
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Red Bull’s Daniel Ricciardo closely followed Rosberg, ranking the second and Championship leader Lewis Hamilton finally anchored the third place.
Red Bull opted to run with the super-soft tyre rather than the ultra-softs like Mercedes and Ricciardo is hopeful their tactics will pay off on Sunday.
Max Verstappen qualified fourth for ahead of Kimi Raikkonen, who was the sole Ferrari driver in Q3, while Toro Rosso enjoyed a hugely impressive session as Carlos Sainz Jr. and Daniil Kvyat finished sixth and seventh. Then in practice on Saturday the Briton’s vehicle developed a suspension problem which affected its braking and compromised his qualifying preparations. “I was on the in-lap and going slow, and when I saw it was already getting to the wall.” he said.
“Nico did a great job and showed the true potential of the vehicle”. Jenson Button just behind him gets a little faster and Nico Hulkenberg, who didn’t get out of the pits in time to do another flying lap, is now in danger as Marcus Ericsson gets into 16th, but then Jolyon Palmer and Kevin Magnussen fail to get themselves out of the drop zone.
Hamilton and Rosberg set the initial pace in Q1, with 1m 45.316s and 1m 45.167s respectively on the ultrasoft tyres that all the frontrunners ran, but it became clear they were just banker laps as Raikkonen bettered that with 1m 44.964s as Verstappen did 1m 45.036s for second.
But Mercedes said there may have been a problem with the auto causing his difficulties – their information said it was producing less downforce than Rosberg’s and they were to analyse the situation further overnight ahead of the race. I’ve not got many good laps out there. “I had an issue with the suspension not working properly in practice which affected my braking – but we fixed that and in qualifying braking wasn’t a problem”.
Ricciardo said he was confident in the bold strategy: “It was always the plan, even before the weekend”.
In Q1, Ferrari’s chances of catching Mercedes at the top of the constructors’ standings suffered a big blow, as Sebastian Vettel was forced to retire.
“Here track position can dictate a lot and safety cars as well. Hopefully tomorrow, try and at least get one step up ahead to give that front row for the team”.
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“It shows the quality of our team with this being our most hard track previous year, we really came away and learnt what went wrong, turned it around and now really dominated the weekend up until now”. No, but I will be keeping an eye on him for sure. But despite going out with a power unit failure a year ago, his form at Marina Bay is good and having won here twice before, in 2009 and 2014. he will be looking to improve during the race.
