Hamilton happy with pole as Mercedes admit tyre strategy error

Lewis Hamilton says he is relieved to have secured pole position for the Singapore Grand Prix and admitted that Mercedes had gone wrong in their tyre strategy, selecting too few sets of the hypersoft tyre compared to their rivals.

To even the playing field, Mercedes risked an embarrassing elimination in Q1 by running the ultrasoft tyres in the first session with everyone else opting for the faster hypersoft tyres.

The gamble paid off but only just, with Hamilton ending the session down in P14 and just two positions away from being knocked out in the first stage of qualifying.

Hamilton said after the session finished and he had secured pole that he was relieved to have taken pole after the strategy blunder.

“Everyone was starting on the hyper-softs and they were getting the experience and we were starting on the (ultra) softs and there is a huge difference compared to the hyper.

“I definitely was a little bit concerned but we were aware that we came here with the wrong tyre strategy in the sense that others had more hypers than us.

“Already from practice we weren’t best prepared. Others started on softer tyres in [first practice] and also in (second and third practice). So we definitely lost some running because the tyre (gaps) are massive, massive. You could see it’s two or three seconds or whatever it was between the tyres.”

Hamilton also added that he was surprised that Ferrari had tried to make it into final qualifying using the slower ultrasofts after Mercedes had already demonstrated the gap in performance between the fastest compound.

“I’m not quite sure why the Ferraris did the run on that tyre – I don’t know if they had four new sets of hypers, probably unlikely, so that’s probably why they had to take another tyre. But you could already have seen from our run that you were not going to get through there, so that just leaves me to believe that they probably just didn’t have an extra tyre.”

Hamilton's pole heaps more pressure onto title rival Sebastian Vettel, with Singapore supposedly a Ferrari track. Another victory on a circuit Ferrari were favourites for could tilt the title race further towards the Mercedes driver.