Andrew Shovlin: We hope for the first win of the season

Qualifying results in Singapore left the team with mixed feelings: if Lewis Hamilton fought for pole position and lost quite a bit to the owner, George Russell dropped out in the second session due to problems with the car.

Lewis Hamilton (3rd): “It was very difficult to fly in such conditions. During practice the car didn’t leave the best impression, but we adjusted the settings and it turned out that this allowed us to fight for the front row of the grid.

I tried to squeeze everything out of the car and was closer to pole today than at any previous race this year. I only lost half of the tenth, but this means I lost these splits of a second on the track. On the one hand it is annoying, on the other hand I am still happy with this result.”

George Russell (11th): “I had a problem with the brakes, which made it impossible to slow down normally in the corners. The grip seemed to be good, but I had trouble cornering. Unfortunately there was constant understeer.

Because of this, we could hardly have had a good final session even if we had managed to get into it. But the telemetry shows what the problem is, and I hope we can fix it tomorrow.

Obviously I’m upset, the team is upset too, because the car on this track is capable of good speed. Lewis was very fast, but I was unable to show a good result. However, there is still hope, because of course we are here to score points.”

Andrew Shovlin, chief race engineer: “At some points in qualifying we hoped for success, but it is a shame that Lewis ended up only 0.05 seconds off pole, although he showed good speeds all evening. George dropped out in the second session as he had problems with the brakes from the start of qualifying.

The last session didn’t go well, we weren’t able to warm up the tires to the right temperatures, but we adjusted the qualifying settings and it seems that this allowed us to show a good pace on the intermediate tyres. At the same time, the Singapore circuit is drying up in an unusual way: high humidity and lack of wind slow this process down, so it is difficult to predict at what point it will be necessary to switch to slicks.

Towards the end of qualifying Lewis did more laps than usual on the slicks, and it seems that this allowed him not only to keep the tires in the correct temperature range but also to understand how to get a good grip . His last lap went great, but he blocked the brakes in corner 16, and this affected the result: you could count on pole, but Hamilton was in 3rd position.

Starting from the second row isn’t bad either, especially since we were more active with a high fuel load than the two drivers who started before us. Overall, we will keep fighting in hopes of getting the first win of the season.”