Close Fight in Singapore Sprint Qualifying

• George Russell qualified second with Kimi Antonelli P7 for tomorrow’s final Sprint of the season in Singapore.

• After underperforming in Malaysia, the team opted to back-to-back test the recent update package with the previous specification across the weekend in Singapore.

• George reverted to the specification that won in Baku with Kimi remaining on the specification from Malaysia, with a new front-wing to run as a test item too.

• George topped the times in FP1 with Kimi P7, although that session leading time was set on the Soft compound with Kimi’s lap on the Medium tyre.

• It was a tightly contested field at the front therefore and that continued into Sprint qualifying; both George and Kimi safely progressed through to SQ3 with the key to a good time being able to keep tyre temperature under control for the full lap.

• George did that to good effect on his second and final effort to claim P2, just 0.120s shy of Max Versappen’s Red Bull.

• For Kimi it proved slightly more difficult with a tricky balance leaving him P7 for tomorrow’s Sprint.

George Russell

It’s been a relatively good first day for me here in Singapore. We were competitive in FP1, topping the time sheets and my final lap in SQ3 felt good. We knew coming into the session that Max (Verstappen) was fast and unfortunately, we couldn’t quite get ahead of him with that last effort. We can still be pleased with our efforts though. We got the car in a good place balance wise and that made it easier to extract the performance.

We will now see what tomorrow brings in the Sprint. We saw that there’s a big difference in grip from the left to the right side of the track here last year, with those lining up on the pole position side having an advantage. The task off the line tomorrow will likely be to maintain P2 and then see what we can do to challenge for victory from there.

Kimi Antonelli

It was a bit more of a tricky day for me today and it felt difficult to put a lap together unfortunately. From the first session onwards, I wasn't quite able to find the rhythm I was looking for and that made it hard to maximise the package when it mattered most. We still have more understanding to do in regard to our upgrade, and the focus will be on working through the data overnight to build a clearer picture of where we can improve.

The positive is that we have plenty of information to look through and there are definitely areas where we can do a better job. The field is very close, so small changes can make a big difference. Hopefully we are able to find more performance and take a step forward tomorrow. I'll be giving it everything out on track and we'll see where that leaves us when it counts.

Andrew Shovlin, Trackside Engineering Director

After a difficult weekend in Malaysia, we decided to run our cars in split specification this weekend here in Singapore. It is not the easiest track to do that at, or have the Sprint format, as it often takes a bit of time to get the car set-up dialled in. We’ve seen that today as whilst we're pleased to see George on the front row, it has left us with a bit of head scratching to do to understand why the update is not bringing the performance step we expect.

Neither car had a great balance although Kimi was lacking more confidence on the braking and entry phase and that's what you need to attack a qualifying lap here. We'll keep working to understand why that's the case. We've got plenty of data around us to try and make some progress and hopefully we'll be able to get Kimi's car in a better place for main qualifying tomorrow.

FP1 Result

Sprint Qualifying Result