Vettel claims sensational Singapore pole

Sep 19, 2015
4 min read

Sebastian Vettel was an unstoppable force in qualifying today. He was the only man to set a sub-1:44 lap and was half a second clear of his nearest competitor Daniel Ricciardo. It’s the German’s first pole since the 2013 Brazilian Grand Prix, and Ferrari’s first pole since the 2012 German Grand Prix at Hockenheim.

This also marks the first non-Mercedes-power pole of this new turbo era in Formula One, on a weekend where Mercedes had the chance to match Williams’ record of 24 consecutive poles set from 1992-3, and Lewis Hamilton could have match Ayrton Senna’s record of 8 consecutive poles.

After qualifying Vettel said: “I know it's only Saturday, and obviously the main job is coming tomorrow, but I had to enjoy the moment when I heard we made it. It was looking pretty good from the offset of quali. The car was fantastic to drive, and it got better through qualifying – I think we did the maximum today.

“I'm surprised by the margin, but I think it just came together; I really had a near perfect lap at the end, so I was very, very happy with the laps I had today, especially the last one.”

Kimi Raikkonen was some eight tenths of a second off his team mate in 3rd.

“I was not very happy since this morning for whatever reason, so I'm a bit surprised to be in this position, after how difficult it felt all day. Hopefully we can get two cars on the podium tomorrow,” Raikkonen said.

Despite his struggles he managed to get himself ahead of Daniil Kvyat who looked the stronger of the two Red Bulls in the early part of qualifying. The Russian scored his best starting position of his Formula One career.

The top Mercedes was Lewis Hamilton in just 5th place. He abandoned his first run in Q3, and felt the need to use the option tyre in Q1; a sign of just how much the team is struggling this weekend. Nico Rosberg was a tenth away from his team mate, which points to this being the car’s ultimate pace.

The team’s issue appears to be the increase in tyre pressures, which are 2psi higher than they were this time last year. It would seem that this has hurt Mercedes more than other teams. It is evident how many things Mercedes have tried to get the car to the top pace, given the number of set-up changes they have made to Nico Rosberg’s car between sessions.

“I was on the knife edge trying to close the gap,” Hamilton said, “The problem this weekend is the tyres are just not working for us. We can't get it into the window and we are sliding around all over the place.

“We have been trying to understand. We do have the quickest car but for some reason the tyres were not switching on and it is apparent on both cars. We have never seen it before.”

Valtteri Bottas put in a very strong qualifying performance in 7th, with Felipe Massa 9th. The car was not expected to perform well around the Marina Bay Circuit as the Williams has not got the best low-speed cornering ability.

They were split by Max Verstappen, who had a very lively end to his lap as he lost the rear on the exit of the final corner and drifted his way over the white line. Romain Grosjean completed the top 10.

McLaren lost out on an opportunity to fight for a place in Q3 as Carlos Sainz has an incident at the end of Q2 whilst the McLarens were on track. The Spaniard lost the rear on the exit of turn 19 and hit the wall, leaving him with left-rear suspension damage. He managed to get his Toro Rosso back to the pits, but he left a part of his front wing on the racing line which saw the remainder of the session yellow flagged.

Sauber were the casualties of Q1 with Felipe Nasr 16th and Marcus Ericsson 17th. They were joined by the Lotus of Pastor Maldonado and the Manor cars. Alexander Rossi managed to stay within half a second of his more experienced team mate’s pace on the final row of the grid.

Provisional grid