Singapore GP Qualifying: Sainz makes it two in a row on a disastrous day for Red Bull

Saturday at Marina Bay confirms the good evidences that Ferrari gave us during free practice, and Carlos Sainz makes good use of the potential of his SF-23 to obtain pole position ahead of George Russell (in P2 at +0.072 s) and Charles Leclerc (in P3 at +0.079 s). Here's the final classification at the end of qualifying:

The SF-23 maintains the performance advantage showed on Friday

Carlos Sainz's form since summer break is simply exceptional: after the pole position in Monza, here in Singapore he did it again. Of course, on both occasions the gaps over his closest rivals were minimal, but this cannot and must not take away from what the Spanish driver managed to put on the track.

Steven Tee / Motorsport Images

His strong point in Q1 and Q2 was the twisty second sector of the Marina Bay track, where having mechanical and aerodynamic grip is much more important than in the first and third sectors, especially in this new layout introduced this year. In Q3, however, after two thirds of his last attempt Sainz was behind both Russell and Leclerc... We can then say that pole was achieved in the third sector, also thanks to a decisive error by Leclerc and the high drag of Russell's Mercedes W14, which paid about 1 tenth of a second on the straight leading to Turn 16.

"As in Monza I started well right from FP1... Today I focused on not making mistakes and doing a completely clean lap, which always pays off here in Singapore. It was a confusing session for everyone, but we kept our concentration until the pole lap. The team has done a great job in recent weeks to better understand the package and car, and we're certainly making progress; then this circuit has always suited Ferrari [...] It would be fantastic to get a race win, I'll give everything like in Monza, hoping that it will be enough"

Carlos Sainz

Among the top 3, the most disappointed driver is certainly Charles Leclerc, who as a driver who has his strong point in qualifying won't be happy to see his teammate score two consecutive poles, with the Monegasque himself relegated to third place in both occasions.

His gap compared to the best laptime (0.067 s in Monza, 0.079 s here), although narrow, shows the difficulties that are marking the - already complicated - relationship between Leclerc and the SF-23 in this second part of the Championship. On a technical level, what penalizes Charles is the impossibility of counting on a solid front, which allows the car to "rotate" when approaching the apex. This weakness, coupled with a setup usually less loaded than the competition - therefore with less grip at the rear end - makes any attempt to help with oversteer when exiting corners useless.

Jake Grant / Motorsport Images

Today, despite the shortcomings just described, Leclerc came very close to taking pole, but the continuous corrections in the first two sectors of the track (and the resulting increase in temperature of the front tyres) triggered a mistake a few corners from the end of the lap: the time lost in this circumstance deprived Charles not only of pole, but also (by just 7 thousandths) of a front row start, which would have been very important from a race perspective.

"Doing a lap at the limit in qualifying is always difficult, but here even more so, both due to the walls and the management of temperatures during the lap... We were all very close, including the Mercedes, it was an interesting qualifying in which I missed something to gain a couple of positions [...] Carlos did a great job, let's see tomorrow what we can do. Tomorrow will be a physical challenge for us, with so much heat and humidity. We didn't expect to be so competitive is a good sign for the future, but we'll see tomorrow..."

Charles Leclerc

George Russell, in a Mercedes at ease around the corners of the Marina Bay circuit, takes, as mentioned, a second position which places him as the number one rival for the two Ferraris in terms of race win ambitions. Of course, this scenario was largely favored by the misadventures at Red Bull (which we will return to later), but the best laptime obtained highlights a real state of grace for George, who inflicts a gap of over 4 tenths to a Marina Bay specialist like his teammate Lewis Hamilton (in P5).

Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images

The driver from King's Lynn, although he will find himself in a "1 vs 2" situation against the Ferraris at least at the start of the race, doesn't believe that this will lessen his chances of victory. The race pace shown in yesterday afternoon's FP2 is certainly in favor of this idea, although Leclerc and Sainz worked on this aspect also in the middle of FP3, testing in lower fuel conditions and lapping significantly faster than we expect Mercedes to do...

"We were very close to pole, Carlos did a great job and we knew that the Ferraris were fast: they always are in Singapore! However, I'm very happy with my lap, second place is an excellent result and gives me a great chance of victory tomorrow [...] It's strange to see how Red Bull went, it will be a big question mark also thinking about their race pace. They seemed slow and I hope they continue like this, but I'm sure they'll be fast again next week"

George Russell

The only unknown for the race will be the tyre degradation from Mercedes and Ferrari: it's easy to think that the English-German team will be better placed in this aspect, also by virtue of the greater aerodynamic downforce which today compromised a little George's qualifying session. Also not to be underestimated is the possibility for Ferrari to keep a slower pace in order to preserve the tyres and complete long stints without too many worries...

The fight between McLaren and Aston Martin goes to the Woking team thanks to a great Lando Norris

In P4 we find the McLaren of Lando Norris (at +0.286 s), who probably brought home the best possible result today - also putting Lewis Hamilton's other Mercedes and Fernando Alonso's Aston Martin behind him, with the latter only in P7 at the end of qualifying...

“I didn't expect to be closer than this to the Ferraris, because they were much faster all weekend. But I'm happy to be in front of one of the two Mercedes: maybe I could have expected more because the best lap in Q3 seemed excellent to me, but if I finished in 4th place it means that I couldn't do more in terms of pace, so I'm happy”

Lando Norris

Also on this track, as happened a few months ago in Austria, we witnessed a big difference in performance between Norris and Piastri; in both cases, however, the motivation is purely technical: as in Spielberg, McLaren here introduces a rather substantial package of aerodynamic updates, and does so again on Norris's car alone.

Jake Grant / Motorsport Images

The reason why Piastri's MCL60 doesn't fit the most recent updates is not to be found in any kind of favoritism towards the top driver, but in a mere difficulty of the manufacturing department in producing the new components in time. The Woking team, in Austria as well as in Singapore, intelligently transformed this critical issue into a possibility of carrying out back-to-back tests that could verify the quality of the new components on track. As often seen since last year, the current Formula 1 cars need - more than in the past - further track testings in order to validate the results from the simulation tools, so the strategy adopted by McLaren is to be considered agreeable.

Andy Hone / Motorsport Images

Coming back to Oscar Piastri, his 17th place (with the resulting elimination in Q1) is due, more than to the lack of updates, to the interruption of the first qualifying manche after Lance Stroll's huge accident at the exit of Turn 19, the last left bend which leads onto the finishing straight. The impact against the barriers - caused simply by a driving mistake by Lance - was quite harsh, but luckily the Canadian driver emerged unscathed. Before the race, the Aston Martin mechanics will replace the chassis on the damaged AMR23, to allow Stroll to take part in a Grand Prix that starts off in the worst possible way for him...

"When I arriver there, Lance had just had the accident... I saw parts of the chassis scattered on the track and the car stopped in another point, so I understood it was a big accident: I'm happy that he's okay. Unfortunately it's a shame that it happened right in front of me and not behind me, but I'm happy that he's okay [...] Surely we could have finished in the top ten, but there are also many other fast cars like Ferrari, Mercedes and the Red Bulls, who are returning to their normal level, so it would have been a great battle with them!"

Oscar Piastri

A shocking elimination in Q2 for Verstappen and Perez!

What caused a stir was the double elimination in Q2 of the two Red Bulls of Max Verstappen (P11) and Sergio Perez (P13). Already from yesterday's free practice we were able to observe how the two drivers of the Anglo-Austrian cars were struggling with grip; if the FP3 held in the morning represented pretty much a solution of the above-mentioned issues, in qualifying the ambient conditions similar to FP2 made the situation worse again.

Andy Hone / Motorsport Images

If we add to this the bad traffic management in Q2 from the Red Bull pitwall, it's understandable why the team that has so far won all 14 races held in 2023 had such a slump. As soon as Max and Checo began their last attempt, it was clear from the first braking point that reaching Q3 would have been unusually difficult: the World Champion had a lot of understeer and a great loss of time in this part of the circuit, while his teammate even spun! The rest of Verstappen's lap wasn't great either, and in fact his laptime of 1'32"173 pushed him out of the top 10 by just 7 thousandths of a second.

Michael Potts / Motorsport Images

The session run by the Max - Red Bull duo, it must be said, hadn't been clean since Q1: on three occasions, the Dutchman was the protagonist of impeding episodes against his rivals. In particular, those who paid the price were Tsunoda, Sargeant and - even worse - an entire queue of cars in the pit lane when, towards the end of Q1, Max dwelled for a long time near the pit exit to create a nice buffer from the cars in front of him.

Such a maneuver is prohibited, as it doesn't allow the people behind in the queue to have enough time to complete a flying lap, even more so if we consider that the same regulations don't allow any overtake in the pit lane: for the above-mentioned drivers, therefore, it would have been illegal to get rid of Verstappen before hitting the track.

"We tried to change several things on the car since this morning trying to improve it, but I think the changes made it even worse, making it undriveable. I couldn't get the right feeling under braking because the car kept sliding... it was a really tough day!"

Max Verstappen

Despite all this, the World Champion got away without having to serve penalties on the grid, but only with 2 reprimands and a "no further action". Wrong decision in my opinion, especially if you consider that in similar circumstances many other drivers rightly had to pay penalties in terms of grid positions.

Surpring performance from the two Haas and Liam Lawson in the Marina Bay qualifying

The other surprises among the top 10 in this qualifying are the two Haas (with Magnussen in P6 at +0.591 s and Hulkenberg in P9 at +0.824 s) and Liam Lawson's Alpha Tauri, which after ousting Max Verstappen from Q3 took tenth place, 1.284 s away from the top.

In the three qualifications contested so far by the New Zealand rookie replacing Daniel Ricciardo, his results have been a real crescendo:

  • P19 at Zandvoort (Dutch GP);
  • P12 in Monza (Italian GP);
  • P10 at Marina Bay (Singapore GP);

Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images

The performance of the two Haas cars was curious to say the least, as they had shown a downward performance trend since the first part of the season; only here in Singapore they had a "burst of pride". Jokes aside, it was probably one of those cases in which a particular affinity is created between the single-seater and the characteristics of the circuit (as we had seen for example in the case of Alfa Romeo in Budapest): such situations often give unexpected results!

Race time and a podium prediction!

The race will start at 14.00 CET, therefore an hour earlier than what we European spectators are used to; the race distance, however, is set to 62 laps.

Based on the feedback collected during free practice and qualifying, I would say that a Ferrari victory could be within the reach of the Maranello team, especially with Carlos Sainz should the Spaniard manage to maintain his pole position. Behind him I expect to find Lando Norris, while for the third step of the podium I think it's more likely to find George Russell than Charles Leclerc: it seems likely not so much in terms of pure pace, but in a scenario in which the Ferrari pitwall is forced to sacrifice the race of the worse-placed driver in order to protect their chances of victory...

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