Sebastian Vettel appeared to be back to his glorious best as he took a dominant pole position around the streets of Singapore, ending the qualifying session with more than a half second gap from former Red Bull team-mate Daniel Ricciardo.
The Scuderia Ferrari driver secured his first pole position for the Italian team, and felt it was a fantastic result for everyone involved, including himself.
“Of course there are no points given today, but for the team, for all of us, this is a fantastic result!” revealed Vettel. “We had been waiting for so long for this pole to arrive, not just the team, but myself too.
“Perhaps I could have aborted the last attempt, but there was no much point in doing so, because I did not know what the others were doing and I felt fantastic, so I pushed to the end.”
Vettel’s focus now turns to the race on Sunday feeling he is starting from the ‘perfect’ place on the grid, and knows the team will need to stay on their toes to keep their advantage over the chasing pack.
“Now I’m looking forward to the race tomorrow, knowing that it will be very difficult and challenging to master all the conditions that you experience in a race,” said Vettel. “But we are starting from the perfect spot.
“I wouldn’t mind to pull away at the start, but it’s going to be a very long race. There are so many small decisions you have to take, and it’s easy to focus on the big result and neglect the small details…
“So we’ll have to focus on tomorrow, because so many things can happen on the way to the chequered flag, with the safety car and so on, as we’ve seen so often in the past.
“Hopefully we can have the same speed tomorrow, and then it could be a very good day.”
