Lando Norris shone in practice and throughout qualifying, being the only driver seemingly unfazed by Singapore's challenging day-to-night conditions. However, a crucial qualifying blunder saw him eliminated in Q1, leaving him to battle for fourth place, one position ahead of Verstappen.
Norris had been looking to take a big bite out of his title deficit to Max Verstappen at the street track, but an unfortunate qualifying blunder left him eliminated in Q1.
Teammate Oscar Piastri, coming down from the high of victory in Baku, managed only fifth on the grid and 0.428 seconds off the pace, but the Australian had been much more competitive in Q2, when his best time would have put him second on the grid and only 0.115 seconds off his teammate.The margins are far tighter in Singapore than Norris’s cool domination suggests.
“We perhaps slightly took ourselves down a rabbit hole because last year, the ride with the car — it was the one race we didn’t win. The car on the bumps was shocking. Verstappen’s fastest time — set in Q2 — was just 0.155 seconds slower than Norris, who dominated the weekend in a car that barely changed from Friday to Saturday.
This race was always going to be important in the narrative of the championship, but it’s been imbued with so much extra meaning after this unexpected qualifying result.Ferrari expected to be a contender this weekend at a track that suits its car — perhaps the only circuit that will pair with the SF-24 before Las Vegas in November.Carlos Sainz crashed out of Q3, which prevented Charles Leclerc from completing his first lap.
Sainz crashed before he’d even started his lap, putting his foot down in the final sector approaching the front straight only to find his car wouldn’t accept it. Ferrari is 51 points off McLaren in the constructors championship and only 31 behind Red Bull Racing, while Leclerc is only 29 points behind Norris on the drivers title table — and only 13 ahead of Piastri.
“Pace is a combination of elements,” he told Autosport. “The set-up of the car is really important, the track evolution is really important, and the way in which the driver is treating the tyre in the first couple of laps is another very important element that in Baku was clearly visible. Pirelli’s tyres have long been controversial in Formula 1 for being made to degrade in an attempt to prompt more varied strategy decisions. That directive comes from Formula 1 itself.
Just ask Ferrari — and half a dozen other drivers who felt they’d left performance on the table on Saturday.If Daniel Ricciardo wanted to make a statement in support of his retention on the grid, this wasn’t the way to do it. “ to the detriment of Daniel,” he said. “We know how he’s performed. We’ve got a lot of data. We’ve got a lot of knowledge of where Daniel is.
F1 Singapore GP Lando Norris Max Verstappen Qualifying
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