Carlos Sainz continued with his brilliant run in Singapore as he made good on the promise shown by Ferrari all weekend to take a dramatic pole position in the Singapore Grand Prix on Saturday.

Already on provisional pole, the Spaniard improved on his final run to narrowly beat rival George Russell and teammate Charles Leclerc to seal a P1 start.

It was a frantic session, one that will see several drivers investigated for impeding after qualifying and one that was red-flagged after Lance Stroll’s hefty crash in the final stages of Q1.

But Sainz stayed out of trouble and continued to set the pace, with a rapid final sector seeing him improve on his provisional pole lap by over two-tenths, with a time of 1m 30.984s good enough to take his second consecutive P1 start. In second was Russell, as he narrowly missed out on pole by just 0.072s

A frustrated Leclerc qualified third fastest for Ferrari ahead of the McLaren of Lando Norris in fourth, the Mercedes of Lewis Hamilton in fifth, and the Haas of Kevin Magnussen in sixth.

Fernando Alonso was seventh fastest for Aston Martin, while Esteban Ocon impressed for Alpine to take eighth, ahead of the other Haas of Nico Hulkenberg, with the AlphaTauri of Liam Lawson – who made it into Q3 for the first time in his short F1 career – rounding out the top-10.

Lawson’s place in Q3 came at the expense of a Red Bull, with Max Verstappen a surprise victim at the Q2 hurdle. The Dutch driver qualified 11th and was less than pleased with his car’s performance, while his teammate Sergio Perez also found himself knocked out in 13th.

Sandwiched between the Red Bull pair is Alpine’s Pierre Gasly in 12th, while Alex Albon was down in 14th for Williams, with Yuki Tsunoda in 15th after failing to set a time for AlphaTauri in Q2.

Due to Stroll’s crash at the end of Q1, several drivers were unable to complete their final laps. But the unlucky few to be knocked out early included the Alfa Romeo of Valtteri Bottas in 16th, as well as the McLaren of Oscar Piastri, who was right behind Stroll when he crashed, down in 17th.

Logan Sargeant went another race unable to out-qualify his Williams teammate Albon, as the rookie ended up 18th, ahead of the second Alfa Romeo of Zhou Guanyu, as Stroll brought up the rear of the field.