Second row lock-out for Sunday It will be an all Mercedes second row for tomorrow’s Singapore Grand Prix with Lewis Hamilton lining up third and George Russell fourth. Overnight work from the team trackside and those back at Brackley built on the encouraging finds from FP2’s long run. With a changed set-up, both drivers were happier with the car on both the Medium and Soft compounds in FP3; George ended the session P2 with Lewis P7. Qualifying under the lights proved more challenging though with George reporting struggles with rear grip in Q1. Both ultimately progressed to Q3 though where an accident for Carlos Sainz brought out the red flag and negated their first efforts. With just one opportunity therefore, both Lewis and George delivered under pressure to take P3 and P4, just 0.026s separating the pair. Driver FP3 Q1 Q2 Q3 Lewis Hamilton P7 6 Laps P4 5 Laps P4 5 Laps P3 1:30.393 Soft, Soft 1:42.929 Soft, Soft 1:29.841 Soft, Soft George Russell P2 6 Laps P13 6 Laps P8 5 Laps P4 1:30.811 Soft, Soft 1:30.153 Soft, Soft 1:29.867 Soft, Soft Lewis Hamilton I’ve been working really hard to improve my qualifying performances and to get myself back up at the front on a Saturday. The car came alive today and we had one of our strongest Saturdays in a while. That was a great feeling. Having just one effort in Q3 after the red flag was tricky, and there was perhaps a little bit more left in the car, but overall, I am really grateful for what we achieved today. I also want to say a big thank you to everyone in the garage. We’ve been moving around on balance all weekend and they’ve put in a big shift to get the car into a good place. We are now starting from a solid place to fight for the podium tomorrow. We don’t know exactly where our race pace will be compared to others, but with the changes we made overnight, it felt like we had improved since Friday. We’ll be giving it everything on Sunday. George Russell If you had told us yesterday that we would qualify on the second row of the grid, we would have absolutely taken that. With the improvements we made overnight though, and how the car felt in FP3, I would have reconsidered. I was feeling super confident in the car, and everything was coming easily. That feeling deserted us in Q1 though and I would have bitten your hand off for P4. We were suffering from a lack of grip and were only just able to progress through each segment to Q3. I was able to put in a decent lap though once we were there and overall, we can’t be disappointed with where we have ended the day. We can ultimately see today as a good recovery. Yesterday, we were on course to be mired in the midfield and yet here we are with a second-row lock-out. We would love to be starting further forward but the team has done a great job to get us back on track so a big thank you to them. Hopefully we can go on the attack tomorrow and fight for the podium. Toto Wolff, Team Principal & CEO After a difficult Friday, we would have absolutely accepted, and been happy with, locking out the second row of the grid for tomorrow’s race. With the progress we made with the car overnight though, and subsequent pace we showed in FP3, P3 and P4 feels a little underwhelming. With all that said, it is not a bad place to be starting the race from. The fluctuations in performance across Friday and Saturday that has affected many teams has been strange. Ferrari dropped back a little today whilst Max (Verstappen) took a step forward, along with ourselves. I suspect we will see more of those fluctuations tomorrow, too. Hopefully the work we’ve done to improve the car from Friday will also translate into our race pace and we can have a competitive Sunday fighting for the podium. Andrew Shovlin, Trackside Engineering Director After a challenging Friday, it is satisfying to have both cars on the second row after a qualifying session where it would have been easy to finish much further down the order. Our teams back in Brackley and Brixworth did a great job overnight to provide direction for FP3, and as soon as we hit the track, it was clear that both cars were in a much happier place. Qualifying here is always frantic – with rapidly improving track grip in the early stages and the potential jeopardy of yellow or red flags. We had managed to keep two sets of new Soft tyres for Q3, but Sainz’s accident and the subsequent red flag meant that we only had one shot at it in the final stages. Both Lewis and George did their quickest laps of the weekend to claim the second row and set us up strongly for tomorrow. It’s always a demanding race here in Singapore and managing the rear tyres will be key tomorrow evening. Safety Cars can offer opportunities to offset or do something different, as we saw last year, and we will be aiming to race for the podium and solid points after some challenging Grands Prix since the summer break.
