F1 SG: Charles Leclerc claims third pole position in a row

Fresh from his wins in Spa and Monza, Ferrari’s 21-year-old Charles Leclerc scored his third successive pole position in a row. This time, it was at Singapore’s Marina Bay Street circuit last night – a track that Ferrari have never been traditionally strong at.

Stunning lap by Leclerc

In the final moments of Q3, Leclerc did a stunning 1min 36.217sec lap to claim his fifth career pole, denying both Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton and Leclerc’s Ferrari team mate Sebastian Vettel in the process.

Said Leclerc, “It was quite a crazy lap. The first one I compromised it, I started the lap too close to Lewis and that compromised the second sector and then I had quite a bit of pressure to perform on the last lap so I gave it my all.”

This had been despite Leclerc admitting on the team radio that he’d lost control of his car on two major occasions during that crazy lap.

He said, “I think whenever you lose the car, you don’t really know how you do it. It just comes instinctively and yeah, these two times were at the exit of Turn 3 and the exit of Turn 11. These ones were quite big ones. I was actually quite surprised that I didn’t lose so much time from that, but everything after that went smooth and I was just giving it my all. So it felt quite intense in the car, but I am very happy.”

Hamilton lost some performance

Hamilton and Vettel will begin tonight’s race in P2 and P3 respectively.

Hamilton was not too happy with his performance in qualifying. He said, “Yesterday was a much smoother day for me and I feel that the performance was lost a little today, or everyone else had improved. My first lap run in Q3 was so-so, didn’t feel so good. Obviously we were a second away and it looked like quite a leap to catch them but yeah, then I just managed to pull back half a second in that last run, a nice clean run, but still just two-tenths down in that first sector, which is obviously where it was lost.”

Also added the Mercedes driver, “I don’t know where the Ferraris picked up their pace today as this is potentially not one of their tracks, but they did a great job. Charles obviously put some great laps in and it really needed something special at the end so I gave it absolutely everything I had. It was very, very close to the wall a couple of times but it was as much as I could get out of the car and I’m very, very happy to be on the front row in the mix with them so we can try to divide them tomorrow.”

In the lead up to the Singapore race, Ferrari had brought in some updates, including a new nose, to try and fix the deficiencies of their cars, which included weaker pace in slow corners. And based on what we saw in qualifying, these upgrades appear to have paid off tremendously for the Prancing Horses.

Strong initial showing from Vettel

At the beginning of Q3, it had initially looked as though Vettel would be the man to beat, with his 1min 36.437sec lap.

However with the cars winding up for the final runs, Vettel was unable to improve on that during his second effort, so he pulled into the pits, having done all that he could.

Said Vettel, “It started off very good, and then, the last run, I think already in sector one, we lost out a little bit and was playing catch-up, and trying to take more and more risks throughout the lap, which didn’t pay off. And then yeah, the last lap obviously didn’t come together.”

No doubt Vettel was disappointed at having been out-qualified by his team mate in the last six races.

Said Vettel, “Yeah obviously I’m not really happy with Q3. The final attempt should have been better. Overall my car was making sense,I was feeling good and I was able to improve run by run, so maybe I peaked a bit too early. I think the track was probably a bit faster at the end. I obviously had a tiny wobble, so no point finishing the lap because I was already quite a bit behind. I think the car was good today and pole was up for grabs – but let’s see what happens tomorrow.”