A "better job" or more engine power? Verstappen's Singapore pole unpicked

There's many a slip twixt cup and lip – and the ifs, buts and maybes nag even more insistently when the gap between pole position and P2 is measured in the thousandths of a second. "I think there was potential to be on pole today, but Max just did a better job," said Charles Leclerc after falling 0.054s short of Max Verstappen in final qualifying for the Singapore Grand Prix.

Ferrari team-mate Lewis Hamilton , who had topped the first two segments of qualifying, was a further 0.069s in arrears after making a setup change which he felt transformed his SF-26 for the worse. Leclerc admitted to making "some mistakes", as evinced by looking at the scrappy evolution of his times through qualifying.

Only in Q1 did he set a faster lap than Verstappen, and that was after a second bite at the cherry; Max only did one push lap in that session, and it was good enough. Charles went for a third lap but it was so scrappy he bailed out of it late on. Verstappen's gains through qualifying were more linear, suggestive of a driver not only gaining confidence (given just one practice session before going into sprint business), but also judging the track evolution well.

Hamilton went the other way: after going fastest of all through Q1 and Q2 he felt there was more to come from the car and dialled in a little more front wing. Lewis was pre-empting the track evolution a little and it put his car too on those nose, so he bled out laptime with oversteer snaps through the opening corners, then again at the chicane at the close of the lap.

Still, comparing Leclerc's fastest Q3 lap with Verstappen's reveals a clear trend towards the Red Bull enjoying a higher top speed on every straight. That could steer you in the direction of concluding that Max enjoyed more power – well, the Red Bull/Ford internal combustion engine is supposedly the most powerful in F1, after all – or was carrying less downforce.

Hamilton was fastest in Q1 and Q2 but pre-empted track evolution with a front-wing tweak which damaged his car's balance Photo by: Clive Rose / Formula 1 via Getty Images It's tricky to be definitive, given the Ferrari's known strengths in slow-speed corners and its small-compressor turbo configuration, which lends itself to better punch out of those turns.

What we can see from the data is that Max opened his lap with a small top-speed advantage, in the order of 6km/h, but had to lift and brake earlier for Turn 1. By carrying more speed to the apex, Leclerc eked out a tenth of a second by Turn 2, building to two tenths by the exit of Turn 3.

The onboard footage indicates he had the confidence to be much more aggressive on the turn-in phase. But despite similar throttle traces, the Red Bull was up to 18km/h faster throughout the run from there to Turn 5, where again Leclerc had the confidence to commit to the corner later and stay on the throttle for longer.

That stemmed the laptime leak but, once again, Verstappen had a straightline speed advantage – albeit smaller this time, in the order of 4km/h. Easily in the noise of having less downforce or drag. Perhaps the Red Bull had shot its electrical bolt earlier in the lap?

It's reasonable to conclude this, since Verstappen lifted off far earlier before the entry to Turn 7, suggesting more lift-and-coast than the Ferrari required. From there, through Turns 8, 9 and 10, a pattern emerged of Leclerc being much faster through the corners but Verstappen then clawing back those gains on the straights.

From a more granular point of view, the offset of the speed traces suggests Max was compromising his entry speed slightly for a more aggressive throttle-on at the exit, so he could hustle the car without taking it too close to the barriers at the exit. Looking at the onboard confirms this: he got the car pointing straight much sooner, enabling him to be in the acceleration phase while the Ferrari was still slowing to its minimum corner speed.

At Turn 13, the light left-hander before the Anderson Bridge, Verstappen had his only scrappy moment of the lap, having to apply a flick of opposite lock as the back end stepped out, sending him wide of the apex – but, again, like a cat landing on all four paws, he got it pointing straight earlier than Leclerc and was faster towards Turn 14 and the end of the sector.

Verstappen (blue trace) enjoyed a straightline speed advantage while Leclerc clawed back laptime in slow corners; in the end, Max's fluency through the final chicane made the difference Photo by: Autosport Again, at Turn 14, Leclerc was later off the throttle and carried more speed.

Verstappen then enjoyed fractionally better acceleration off the corner but the gap between them was by this point hovering around a tenth of a second in Leclerc's favour. Even with the Red Bull's now fractional speed advantage down the back straight, Leclerc was still fractionally up on entry for the right/left chicane of turns 16 and 17, dethrottling less sharply and taking fractionally more kerb at the first apex.

But Leclerc then got a little too greedy between the corners, holding half-throttle as Verstappen lifted almost completely off, which induced a transient moment of understeer in the Ferrari. That gave Verstappen a better exit angle again and a cleaner path to full throttle. Small margins, but it inverted the laptime delta in his favour and he held it all the way to the line.

Whatever balance of virtues the different cars had over the lap, it was Verstappen's lighter touch through this chicane which proved decisive. "I think the whole weekend already we've had a strong car," said Max afterwards. "So I knew it was going to be a tight battle, and I think you could see that throughout qualifying.

"I think the car has been in the right window the whole weekend, so it was more just fine-tuning and tweaking tiny little bits." What's becoming clear is that Red Bull have finally got the RB21 into a place where Verstappen can work with it. Some of the weaknesses are still there, but gains in other places have softened the impact: it may not have the Ferrari's slow-corner performance, for instance, or the theoretical low-down grunt, but its stability and traction on corner exit offsets that.

And in Max Verstappen, Red Bull has a champion street fighter well capable of locating and exploiting any scrap of advantage he can find. Read Also: Formula 1 What we learned from the 2026 F1 Singapore GP sprint race and qualifying We want to hear from you! Let us know what you would like to see from us in the future.

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