Formula 1 championship leader Lewis Hamilton says that his lap to propel Mercedes to pole position for the 2018 Singapore Grand Prix “felt like magic.”
Hamilton’s championship rival Sebastian Vettel – who enters this weekend 30 points adrift in the title battle – topped the final practice session and was largely regarded as the favourite for pole.
Despite having ended up 0.503 seconds adrift in practice, Hamilton was able to overturn the deficit in qualifying.
Delivering a 1m36.015s lap time on his first run in Q3, Hamilton claimed pole by 0.319s from Max Verstappen’s Red Bull. Vettel ended up third and was 0.613s behind Hamilton.
“That was a hard qualifying session,” said Hamilton.
“That lap felt like magic. I don’t really know where it came from but it came together.
“Honestly, I don’t think there was a moment that was wide or with any problems it was just perfectly to the limit.
“It felt like one of the best laps that I remember feeling.”
Hamilton was unable to improve on his first lap during his second and final run of the session and noted that; “On the second lap I tried to find a little bit more.
“[Braking] just half a metre later was just too much and the car wasn’t going to have it, so I do feel like I got everything possible in that first lap.”
With Mercedes having historically struggled to match the raw pace of Ferrari and Red Bull at Singapore – locking out only the third row of the grid in 2015 and ’17 – the team had cited this race as a “damage limitation” weekend in the context of the championship.
“We knew we would come to this race and that the Red Bulls but particularly the Ferraris would be really tough to beat,” Hamilton added. “So this is really an incredible moment for us to be on pole here considering the circumstances.”
