Hamilton knows Rosberg "very quick" at Marina Bay despite missing fast lap in P2; Title leader Nico downplays potential disadvantage
Friday 19 September 2014 19:32, UK
Friday pacesetter Lewis Hamilton has set his sights on seeing off the perennial challenge from Nico Rosberg and the prospect of renewed threats from Mercedes’ rivals to claim what he has termed a “very important” pole position in Singapore.
For the 11th time in 14 races this season it was Hamilton who set the pace on the opening day of a grand prix weekend, although the significant caveat that should be applied to the reading of Friday’s final P2 timesheet is that Rosberg was forced to abort what would have been his sole fast lap on the supersoft tyres.
Still, on the back of his race victory over his championship-leading team-mate at Monza, Hamilton admitted he "feels good" at Marina Bay and is now eyeing his third career pole at the floodlit street circuit.
"It [pole]’s been very, very important,” he told Sky Sports F1. “For the start, for example, the right side always gets better starts, and it’s impossible to follow here.
“So getting at the front, as always, is going to be really important and that’ll be the target.”
With the red flag that truncated Rosberg’s supersoft run rendering the difference in pace between the duelling Mercedes pair on the P2 timesheet meaningless, the mere two hundredths of a second that separated Hamilton and Rosberg in the earlier session points to another intense battle at the front of the field.
And while naturally expecting the sister car to be strong, Hamilton is also aware of the prospect of improved competitiveness from the chasing pack after Ferrari and Red Bull finished within 0.3s of his best time.
“I feel good this weekend, but Nico’s very quick as well,” the 29-year-old acknowledged. “Also the Red Bulls, we don’t know where they’ll be, and also Ferrari look quite quick so we’ve just got to focus on our job.”
However, Hamilton’s assessment of his day as a whole in Mercedes’ end-of-day press release suggests the Silver Arrows’ W05 has yet to fully stretch its legs around the challenging 5.065km layout.
“Today was a work in progress. We made some changes between P1 and P2 and, whether it was those changes or the track itself, the balance didn't feel right,” Hamilton said.
“It felt like we lost a bit of performance but we'll look into the details and see what it was tonight. The long run was okay - I had a bit of traffic which wasn't ideal, as when you back off to rebuild the gap the tyres come back to you a bit which may not give an accurate picture of exactly how long they will last.”
Rosberg, meanwhile, was not too vexed about missing out on completing a full qualifying-style lap, although he admitted he too has set-up work to do overnight.
“It was a pity. I got the red flag in middle of my fast lap so I was only able to push for the first half and only able to learn about the car in the first half of the track,” the German said.
“So I’m missing the second half but still I got a little bit of an impression of the car in that first half of the lap – [I] didn’t like it, but I know what to do and with my engineers we’ll figure something out. So it’s okay, it’s not a major issue.”
The championship leader also expressed surprise about the two-second-plus difference between the peak performance of the weekend’s two tyre compounds, the soft and supersoft.
“It seems like a massive difference,” Rosberg added. “I didn’t finish my lap so I don’t exactly know how much, but I think it’s about two seconds or something. So a huge difference.”
The 2014 Singapore GP is live only on Sky Sports F1 this weekend. Our race-day coverage begins at 11.30am on Sunday with lights out at Marina Bay at 1pm.
