Max Verstappen looked on course to claim a vital pole position in Singapore when he sensationally aborted his final lap.
That left him only eighth on the grid in a car which was clearly quick enough for pole position. But as team principal Christian Horner explained later, the team faced a choice between that or starting from the pit lane.
As the final seconds of qualifying on the damp-but-drying Marina Bay circuit ticked down, the realisation had dawned on the Red Bull pit wall that they hadn’t put enough fuel in Verstappen’s car.
He likely had sufficient fuel to make it to the finishing line, but not enough to make it back to the pits and provide the required one-litre sample. Crossing the line and running dry on track isn’t an option, as the rules state “if a car has not been driven back to the pits under its own power, it will be required to supply the […] sample plus the amount of fuel that would have been consumed to drive back to the pits.”
As Q3 began the seven teams participating all faced the same challenge of deciding the fuel loads for a 12-minute session in which the track was damp but drying rapidly. Getting the fuel weight right is especially important at a track like Singapore as every extra kilogram is a costly penalty to carry in the repeated acceleration and braking zones.
However the quicker a car goes in qualifying, the more laps it can complete. In an ordinary dry session teams perform two separate runs and the car can be refuelled in between them when it is pulled into the garage. But with the track conditions improving so quickly, and the threat of a yellow flag which could disrupt proceedings at any moment, circumstances were different in Singapore.
Red Bull didn’t judge them quite right. As team principal Christian Horner explained, their estimate of the fuel they would need for Verstappen to do his five ‘push’ laps and one cool-down lap was slightly off.
“The track was ramping up and we assumed five laps would be the maximum we could do but as we came up to the flying lap, fuel was too close to the limit,” he said.
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Verstappen’s radio messages during Q3
Red Bull tried to maximise Verstappen’s running time by sending him out first of all 10 drivers in Q3. He gained over two seconds per lap on his first runs as the track conditions improved rapidly.
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