The McLaren team principal could do little more than watch and wait in the second qualifying session as Lewis Hamilton battled to escape elimination after making a mistake on his first flying lap.
“After I ran wide in the second part of qualifying I decided to play it safe on the one remaining run,” explained the British ace, “At the last sector I was really fast, but I still have to improve in the first two sectors; particularly at turn five I lost a bit of time.”
The Briton scraped through into Q3 by a mere tenth of a second where he hustled his McLaren onto the front row of the grid, albeit a full half a second behind Felipe Massa.
“That was a pretty stressful qualifying hour!” exclaimed Ron Dennis after the ordeal was over. “Lewis was hampered by a yellow flag on one of his runs and by traffic on another, which made things a little too close for comfort in the second session, but then did a very good job in the final session.”
Dennis also hinted that McLaren have adopted a competitive fuel strategy with Hamilton: the 61-year-old was quick to point out that Singapore’s long three mile street track carries a hefty fuel weight penalty, and he seemed happy with Hamilton’s performance in light of this.
“It’s all about race strategy,” he said. “Fuel weight is a very significant factor in terms of lap time on this circuit, so let’s just say that we’re looking forward to a close and competitive race tomorrow.”