Marina Bay Street Circuit, Singapore
5.065 km, 3.147 miles
Weather: Humid and dry
Temperature: Air: 28-29°C Track: 33-34°C
Q1
F. Massa 1:44.014 (17th)
L. Stroll 1:44.728 (18th)
Q2
F. Massa -
L. Stroll -
Q3
F. Massa -
L. Stroll -
- Felipe Massa qualified 17th with Lance Stroll 18th for the Singapore Grand Prix
Paddy Lowe, Chief Technical Officer: The circuit evolution in Singapore is normally very high but today was particularly extreme because of oil put down from one of the earlier support races. That certainly caught Lance out. He’s already on a learning curve at the circuit so despite three attempts on three new sets of tyres, he didn’t manage to set a good enough time to get out of Q1. In Felipe’s case, unfortunately he hit the wall on the exit of Turn 21. This was probably promoted by the oil that had been put down at the entry to Turn 20, so that lost his first-timed lap. Luckily, the damage wasn’t too extreme, although it was a very big hit. The car had survived with minor damage which we repaired. Felipe went out for the second run and that would have been good enough for P13 at that stage of qualifying, but he had a big oversteer moment in the final corner sequence, which lost him about half a second. With an evolving track, I’m sure Felipe would have been in a position to improve in the later sessions, as did everyone else, so it is unfortunate that we missed the cut for Q2. I think the car had better pace than we showed today. We will see what we can do tomorrow. We can still race well, it’s a long race that is usually filled with incidents. Cars and drivers suffer a lot in the final half hour so if we can hang on until the end, and be in a good state, there’s still potential to score points.