Leclerc on Singapore GP pole after Verstappen aborts final lap

Charles Leclerc claimed pole position for Formula 1’s Singapore Grand Prix, as championship leader Max Verstappen aborted his final qualifying lap and wound up only eighth fastest.

Verstappen was furious at being called into the pits while on a lap of the Marina Bay F1 circuit that would have been fast enough to demote Leclerc from pole position, complaining over the radio that “I don’t get it!”.

Red Bull was likely forced to pull Verstappen in early to ensure his car had enough fuel left in the tank to deliver the required sample to the FIA at the end of the session.

That removed the final challenge to Leclerc’s supremacy. On a tricky circuit that was wet in some places and dry in others, the track was only dry enough for slicks in Q3 but drivers had to stay out on a single set of tyres to maintain enough temperature to extract the lap time from them.

This will have made it more difficult to judge how much fuel to put in the cars before the session.

Leclerc’s final 1m49.412s effort proved enough to beat Sergio Perez’s Red Bull to pole by just 0.022s.

Lewis Hamilton was on provisional pole in the early part of Q3, but the Mercedes driver ultimately missed out by just 0.054s and finished up third fastest.

The second Ferrari of Carlos Sainz was fourth, 0.171s away from pole, while Fernando Alonso, who also briefly flirted with provisional pole himself a couple of times, was fifth for Alpine, only 0.554s adrift of Leclerc.

Lando Norris (McLaren), Pierre Gasly (AlphaTauri), Verstappen, Kevin Magnussen (Haas) and Yuki Tsunoda (AlphaTauri) rounded out the top 10.

Magnussen, who did brilliantly to make Q3 in the first instance, and Tsunoda were both compromised by starting the session on intermediate tyres and having to switch to slicks after realising that was a mistake.

George Russell was the biggest scalp of Q2, missing the Q3 cut by just 0.006s while his Mercedes team-mate Hamilton was second quickest in that segment.

Russell dropped out of the top 10 thanks to late improvements from the AlphaTauri drivers plus Alonso’s Alpine, apologising to Mercedes for not making it through and indicating he was suffering similar problems to FP1 on Friday when he struggled with brake locking and torque overruns from his engine.

The Aston Martins of Lance Stroll and Sebastian Vettel, plus the Alfa Romeo of Zhou Guanyu, gambled on taking slick tyres for the closing laps of Q2, but the move backfired on a track that wasn’t improving as fast as expected and all three were eliminated.

Mick Schumacher had a chance to make the top 10 having remained on inters, but his final lap was only good enough for 13th, behind Russell and Stroll. Vettel was 14th and Zhou 15th, Zhou having impressively made the top 10 for Alfa Romeo in Q1.

Qualifying began on a wet but drying track, so Q1 became a game of pounding around on intermediate tyres, searching for gradually increasing grip on an ever-improving track surface.

Thus no drivers could afford to be anywhere other than on track in the closing minutes, creating a busy climax to this segment of the session.

When the music eventually stopped, Valtteri Bottas, Daniel Ricciardo, Esteban Ocon and the two Williams drivers were all eliminated.

Ricciardo’s final flying lap was only good enough for 17th, despite fitting a new set of inters for his final run, while Bottas was knocked out by a last-gasp improvement from Schumacher and ended up 16th fastest for Alfa Romeo, 0.169s away from the Q2 cut-off.

Ocon was a surprise elimination in the updated Alpine, complaining he had “no brakes”, while Alex Albon flirted with Q2 qualification before being shuffled out in the final minutes.

Less than three tenths of a second blanketed Bottas, Ricciardo and Ocon, while Albon was 0.648s back and Nicholas Latifi a further 0.547s adrift.

Qualifying Results