Wolff: I hope we make it to the qualifying final.

      After the end of Saturday's practice in Singapore, Toto Wolff, the head of the Mercedes team, commented on its results on Sky Sports. On one hand, his drivers posted the third- and fourth-fastest times; on the other hand, only two drivers crashed their cars on the tricky street circuit yesterday, and one of them was George Russell, who today complained he still doesn't feel confident behind the wheel of the W16.

      "This is a street circuit where you have to take risks and be brave enough to drive right up against the barriers," Wolff said, noting that Russell was less than half a tenth off the fastest time of the session. "And if we're seeing these kinds of results already, I'm curious how intense the battle in qualifying will be.

      But the temperature will drop a bit by the evening, so conditions will change slightly. With such a tight spread, each tenth of a second will mean a difference of several grid places. And I would say we can quite possibly fight in the front rows.

      Including Kimi Antonelli (fourth in the session), because since the Baku round we've seen him working very composedly. Certainly, during the European part of the season things didn't always go well for him because he was under too much scrutiny and expectations were too high.

      But I think it helped him that his workload with the press and sponsors is now lighter, and he spends more time working with the engineers, which is good. The learning process continues, we always support him and remind him that you shouldn't be afraid of mistakes, after all this is still the last year we're using these cars.

      For Kimi this is a debut season, and he doesn't know all the tracks. But next year it will all start from scratch, and everyone will have to adapt to new cars. Overall, in my view Kimi is handling things well and he's got a fighting spirit.

      Speaking of George, it's interesting that in the end he took that particular corner faster than anyone — that was on the final two laps of the session. I suppose he just needed to build up the pace gradually, trying to regain full confidence. I hope we make it through to the qualifying final...

      Of course drivers can make mistakes when they are driving at the limit. And I think Russell did the right thing by steering the car straight into the wall. Only the nose cone was damaged and the suspension wasn't harmed, although at first it looked like the car was starting to spin and would hit the barriers side-on — that would have caused much greater damage.

      Undoubtedly he's a very mature professional, and he's quite comfortable in a car that's very difficult to drive..."