Lewis Hamilton upsets the odds to put Mercedes on pole at Singapore Grand Prix

In Monza a fortnight ago Ferrari were expected to trounce Mercedes en route to an easy 1-2 finish on their home ground. Instead, they lost to Lewis Hamilton and Mercedes.

Here, under the lights of Singapore’s charismatic Marina Bay, so often Mercedes’ bogey circuit notwithstanding Hamilton’s Sebastian Vettel-assisted victory here last year, the reds were again expected to dominate qualifying.

And again the Britain stole their thunder as he produced the pole lap of the year, and perhaps even of his career, to stop the clocks in 1m 36.015s.

That was an improvement of 1.179s on the best lap set up to that point, the 1m 37.194s with which Kimi Raikkonen had set the pace in Q2.

And though he could not match that on his second run in the final qualifying session, it was more than enough for the world champion to seal his 79th pole of his career. He really is on a fantastic run of success right now.

“That was a hard qualifying session,” he panted, “It felt all the way like a magic lap and I don’t know where came from, but it all just came together. Everyone has worked so hard to pull out that extra bit, and today I managed for just that lap to get more. I’m super-overwhelmed, and my heart’s racing. I’ll be having a panic attack in a second!”

Actually, he wasn’t far off one of those in Q1, when Mercedes ran the middle-range ultrasoft Pirelli tyres as everyone else opted for the faster hypersofts, and finished 14th, just two places and 0.231s above the relegation zone.

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“Yesterday looked very good, and then we made some more changes today. Then in Q1 everyone else ran on hypersofts but we started on ultrasofts. We were aware that we came here with the wrong tyre strategy in the sense that others had opted for more hypersofts than we had. That meant we had to get rid of a set of soft tyres in FP3 and then run ultrasofts in Q1 to leave us enough sets of hypersofts for Q2 and Q3.

“The pace in Q1 was definitely greater than we had expected, and as I told my crew, I couldn’t drive any faster then that I did. I was definitely a little bit concerned. And when we did run hypersofts in Q2, everyone else had the advantage that they’d already done more running on them.

“But on my first lap in Q3 I was definitely feeling something special as it unravelled. We were able to pull together everything we had learned in practice, all the bits of the puzzle. 99 percent of the time it doesn’t come together, but I had a great car beneath me and there wasn’t a corner where I thought we could do more. There were no moments when I ran wide, no wheelspin, I was pushing perfectly to the limit… It was one of the best qualifying laps I remember.

“This track is so difficult. It’s the most challenging of the year, Monaco on steroids, longer and with more corners!

Ferrari did not even have the satisfaction of second best time, for Max Verstappen screwed everything out of his Red Bull, having previously lambasted the performance of his Renault engine. Asked for his feedback in the final practice session, he had barked: “My feedback is that the product in the back of this car isn’t working how I want it to!”

In the final session the Dutch nonpareil also got his best lap on his first run, taking the other front row slot with 1m 36.334s.

There wasn’t a lot of happiness at Ferrari, where they had lost opportunity written all over their faces.

Vettel could only muster third best time, and was also unable to go faster on his second try than his first lap of 1m 36.628s.

The shock visible on his face, he said: “Obviously we wanted to get pole and we didn’t. It was a messy qualifying session, and at the end there was just too much time missing so we were no better than third.”

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To suggestions that he may not have done the best warm-up laps on either run, compromising his ultimate pace, he responded: “It’s never ideal to have a mini race on the out lap as you have to go through traffic, and there were a lot of cars out there, but I can’t blame it on that as in the end we had two laps and they were not fast enough.”

Like Mercedes in Q1, Ferrari found when they tried ultrasofts in Q2 they just weren’t fast enough.

“Obviously they didn’t work,” he agreed, “but in any case qualifying was not as smooth as it should have been. It was difficult to get a rhythm and feel for the car. But I’m not worried about the gap to Mercedes, just disappointed today not to get the best out of the package.

“Congratulations to Lewis, that was a great lap but I don’t think it was unbeatable. But other people did better job, including him with his lap as an individual, but also Mercedes as a team. I don’t want to take anything away from Lewis’s lap, and he is on pole by quite a margin, that’s not up for debate. There’s not much point to go into detail of what we should have done. I had the laps and they were not strong enough to be near.”

Vettel believes he has a strong race car, while Verstappen says that his engine problems occur only when they take the Renault motor to its max for qualifying, so he too, hopes to pose a greater threat tomorrow evening.

Hamilton, meanwhile, believes that he just has to keep his nose clean and make a good start.

“I’m comfortable starting on the outside line to Turn 1,” he said. “Starts are always difficult here but being on racing line is equally as good as having the inside starting line. We’ll see where it goes.”