Hamilton relieved to qualify third after “very poor” start to weekend · RaceFans

Lewis Hamilton said his car came alive in qualifying for the Singapore Grand Prix as he qualified third after a poor start to practice.

The Mercedes driver was outside the top 10 in both of yesterday’s practice sessions and yesterday expressed concerns about reaching Q3.

“I’m not saying it’s a surprise, but through the weekend so far we were looking – well, I was looking, particularly – very poor,” he said.

“This morning and all of yesterday, we were 1.2 seconds off. We arrived with a car that was massively understeery and we just couldn’t dial any [grip] in, no matter what we did. Nothing changed.”

The situation appeared not to have improved in final practice today. “We made changes overnight, came here today, pretty much the same thing, and I was definitely shocked to see that we were still 1.2 seconds behind Lando [Norris] again.”

However Hamilton said his car came alive in the cooler conditions of qualifying. “We just kept our heads down, kept not giving up, we made some more changes and got into this session and it was like night and day,” he said.

“It was such a big difference. The car was all of a sudden alive and I was able to go where I wanted to go. It was looking really strong throughout qualifying.”

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Carlos Sainz Jnr’s crash which caused the start of Q3 to be red-flagged complicated matters, said Hamilton. “Obviously the crash in Q3 made it difficult for all of us to put that final lap together.”

“I think my lap was also nothing special,” he added. “It was very difficult to get the tyres perfect and not over-slide them. I had a lot of snaps.

“So I think with a better job, maybe we could have been on the front row with [Norris], but I don’t know whether or not we could have beaten him today. But still I’m really, really happy.”

Hamilton’s qualifying performances have been patchy this year and this is only the fourth time he will start from the front two rows.

“I’ve not been up here for a while,” he said. “Qualifying has been a nightmare for quite a long time so it feels great to be up here. I feel very grateful and very happy.

“George [Russell] and I are in the second row, so hopefully from here we can apply pressure to [Norris and Verstappen]. To even to be ahead of a McLaren and a Red Bull and also the Ferraris is mega, considering how fast the Ferraris particularly are here. So I hope that we can hold on to these guys tomorrow.”