Dramatic Final Sprint Saturday in Singapore

• Kimi Antonelli qualified P4 with George Russell sixth fastest ahead of Sunday’s Singapore Grand Prix in a highly competitive qualifying session.

• That followed a dramatic Sprint in which George crashed out of the lead at the end of lap one and Kimi cycled through from P7 to P4.

• George made a strong start in the Sprint, claiming the lead from Max Verstappen into Turn 1, after rain hit the track just before lights out.

• Unfortunately, his race would come to a premature end as he lost traction on the white line at Turn 19 and hit the wall.

• Kimi meanwhile was running P6 throughout but that became P4 when the two McLarens tangled near the end.

• The team made several set-up changes on Kimi’s car ahead of qualifying as we aimed to get more out of the new update package, and they seemed to have the desired effect.

• In a close session, Kimi fell just 0.189s from pole position and took P4 despite abandoning his final lap.

• It was a similar story for George on his last effort but his first lap left him sixth fastest; he will start from the back of the field due to a grid penalty for using more power unit components than allowed.

Kimi Antonelli

We studied the data from Friday and had a few ideas on how to improve our pace with the update for the Sprint. We tried a few things which helped and that gave us a good direction to follow heading into qualifying. They improved the car and that was very encouraging for us all; the team has done a really good job, and we’ve really grown our understanding of the package. We ended up qualifying P4, but I think there was more lap time in it.

The window that this update seems to work in is narrower than the previous specification, but we are working hard to find the right balance and unlock its true potential. The car definitely reacts differently to the previous package, but we continue to learn here in Singapore and I am sure we will add to that tomorrow. Hopefully we can have a good race, be looking ahead and get ourselves in the fight for the podium.

George Russell

First of all, I want to say a big thank you to the team for all of their hard work today to rebuild my car after the crash in the Sprint. It was a silly mistake on my side, running wide at the final corner, getting on the white line and losing traction. I misjudged it so that’s on me. I felt good on the formation lap and obviously took the lead so was pushing hard. I just pushed too hard too soon and that led to our DNF.

Following the subsequent rebuild, the main focus for us in qualifying was to ensure the handling of the car was OK and focus on what learning we could achieve across the two cars. The balance didn’t quite feel as good as it did on Friday and that probably explains our lack of pace this evening. We will look at the data tonight and see if there’s anything we can improve ahead of tomorrow.

Starting from the back of the grid here isn’t ideal. It’s going to be very hard to overtake and make my way through, but I’ll be trying my best tomorrow. Hopefully I’ll have some good battles, and we will see where we end up.

Toto Wolff, Team Principal & CEO

That was a complicated day but one that has helped us as a team in many different ways. We have been running two different specifications across our two cars here in Singapore, all focused on building our learning of the new update and making sure we can get it working as expected. We found some good avenues to explore overnight, and the team has done a good job of dialling out some of the balance challenges we saw in Malaysia and then yesterday too. To be just a couple of tenths away from pole position is encouraging and we know that there is more to come.

The Sprint was unfortunate for George as he got caught out on the white line at the final corner. That can happen in the wet, particularly when you are the first car on the road and approaching the conditions ahead of everyone else. The mechanics did an unbelievable job putting the car together after that and that helped us continue our comparison work into qualifying.

With Kimi starting from P4 and George at the back, we know we are in damage limitation mode tomorrow. Overtaking is tough here, but we will be giving it our all to make up places and score decent points.

Andrew Shovlin, Trackside Engineering Director

We started with a tricky Sprint in difficult wet conditions. George had got himself into the lead with a strong start but got caught out on an exit kerb at the end of the opening lap and that was his race over. That was unfortunate as we saw how strong his long run pace was in FP1 and he was definitely in contention for victory.

Kimi meanwhile held position off the line but got stuck in a train of cars and, as overtake mode was disabled due to the low grip conditions, there were no chances to attempt a pass. We did benefit from the McLarens coming together in the closing laps though and earnt some useful points with P4.

The mechanics did a good job to get George's car back together in time for qualifying and that was particularly helpful to get more useful comparative data with the two packages. Ultimately George was less happy with the handling of his car than yesterday; we need to understand why that was as the set-up hadn't changed although much of the car had been rebuilt.

Kimi, running the update package, was closer to the pace than he was yesterday and that is encouraging. It's good that we have made some progress although we're not going to get excited about P4 on the grid and clearly have more work to do to understand why the car is proving a bit trickier to drive. We now have got two very different races to manage tomorrow. George from the back will be looking to recover into good points and Kimi will be hoping to progress forward from where he starts into a fight for the podium positions.

Sprint Result

Starting Grid