Lewis Hamilton: I lost half a second because of cold tyres.

      Ferrari's best result in qualifying for the Singapore Grand Prix was Lewis Hamilton's sixth-fastest time. Commenting on the result, the seven-time world champion cautiously criticized the team for the strategic decisions that forced him to do the final attempt on cooled tyres.

      Charles Leclerc qualified seventh and, visibly upset, said he did not understand why the car developed severe understeer.

      Lewis Hamilton (6th): “I was happy with how the weekend was going because I felt comfortable in the car. However, in the first part of qualifying I had thoughts that my session might end early again.

      I felt foolish because I initially thought we could fight for the top positions, and then everything went off-plan when I had to wait a long time exiting the pit lane and the tyres had time to cool down.

      Something often happens to us that prevents us from running an optimal session. We need to keep working on better optimising our actions during sessions.

      We have to keep progressing. Right now everyone in the team is giving their all, but we also need to pay attention to how others act. For example, Mercedes. They went out first, so their tyres didn’t cool down, and they ended up on the front row.

      I, on the other hand, had to wait in a queue leaving the pit lane. Because of that the tyres cooled by five or six degrees, which are then hard to recover during the out-lap. As a result, in the final qualifying I simply couldn’t do anything – I lost half a second purely because of the tyres. It’s frustrating, but in any case tomorrow I will do everything I can.”

      Charles Leclerc (7th): “Today everything went wrong. It all started with tyre-to-track grip – there was practically none. It’s a pity, because alongside Baku this circuit is one of my favourites of the season.

      In the past I’ve always performed well here, but in qualifying I felt uncomfortable in the car because of heavy understeer. The car felt very nervous and unpredictable.

      The problems began back in the second practice, but by qualifying we still couldn’t solve them without making the car’s behaviour even more unpredictable. And that’s the last thing you want to see on a street circuit. The weekend is proving very difficult.

      I hope these problems are related to the specifics of the circuit, but right now I have no explanation. We haven’t made any radical changes to the car compared to the previous two races. We need to analyse everything and understand exactly what went wrong.”