Rosberg beats Ricciardo for pole in Singapore

Nico Rosberg storms to pole

Last year they struggled, this year Aldo Costa fixed it, and Nico Rosberg blew away the competition in qualifying for the Singapore GP. Rosberg set a new track record of 1m42.584s to win the pole over Red Bull's Daniel Ricciardo by a full 1/2-second.

Lewis Hamilton continued to make mental errors in qualifying and never got a perfect lap (7/10ths slower than Rosberg), which means he will start on row 2 Sunday alongside Max Verstappen who had the better Renault engine but was still slower than his teammate.

"That was a fantastic Qualifying for me – especially on my 200th GP weekend," said Rosberg. "I think this lap is in my top three of all time. I felt totally at one with the car, which is really rare. I was able to push a lot and couldn't even top that first lap time on my second run. In the past we've seen that in Singapore pole is important, so I'm in the best possible position for tomorrow. We know that there a lot of pressure will come from Daniel in the Red Bull, as he will start on the SuperSoft tires.

"This will be a tough battle but I'm quite confident that we chose the right strategy. We can be really proud of how much quality we have in the team. We learned a lot from last year when we were nowhere in qualifying. We've closed that gap and that is very satisfying."

[adinserter name="GOOGLE AD"]"Not the pole, but not bad," Ricciardo says after being told he secured second. "Cheers guys."

Hamilton indeed was lucky not to drop further – Verstappen was just 0.04s behind at the flag. The four-time Singapore winner's fightback will be just one of the storylines to play out over a grueling 61 laps of Marina Bay tomorrow. It's one of the toughest races on the calendar, and has a habit of throwing up the unexpected.

Kimi Raikkonen rounded out the top-5 for Ferrari while his teammate Sebastian Vettel will start dead last after car rear suspension problems saw him not make it out of Q1.

What might be key in the race tomorrow is that Red Bull will start on the harder Super-Soft tires whereas Mercedes must start on the Ultra-Soft tires so expect Red Bull to run longer on the first stint and that might be a winning strategy.

What can Red Bull do meanwhile, given they start on the supersoft tire. The team appeared to be faster than Mercedes over long run simulations on Friday – might they have something special up their sleeve?

A good day for Toro Rosso meanwhile, as both Sainz and Kvyat break into the top 10 in qualifying for the first time since Monaco. And at the other end of the scale, a terrible day for Vettel, who is set to start from the back of the field – not ideal given how tough overtaking is at Marina Bay.

More to follow…..

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