After heavy rain ahead of FP3 had soaked the Marina Bay track and meant that session was cut in half, Q1 began with patches for the layout still very wet but the majority dry.
This meant the frontrunning drivers ran intermediates to get through to Q3 before finally the majority made the switch to slicks, with all cars fuelled to circulate throughout each segment to take advantage of the drying conditions and the major track evolution factor.
Lewis Hamilton led the way early in Q3 with a 1m53.082s that better Yuki Tsunoda’s initial leading effort still running the inters.
Hamilton, Leclerc and Fernando Alonso exchanged first place throughout the middle part of Q3, while Verstappen showed rapid pace in the first sector before he regularly lost out with big slides in the still-damp parts of the final sector.
Leclerc’s pole-winning 1m49.412s came with under a minute remaining but his opposition could not depose him at a race where he could lose the 2022 title fight to Verstappen.
Perez slotted into second before Hamilton posted a purple second sector to briefly threaten Leclerc’s top spot before he fell back in the final turns.
Carlos Sainz took fourth ahead of Alonso, Lando Norris and Pierre Gasly and then came Verstappen.
He abandoned his two final runs, the first featuring a stunning first sector before a slide at Turn 18 meant he backed off for one final effort.
He was close but not bettering his previous personal best but was ordered to pit and not complete the lap by Red Bull to his clear frustration and confusion.
Kevin Magnussen had like Tsunoda started Q3 on the inters but switched to slicks much earlier than the AlphaTauri runner, the pair ending up ninth and 10th.
Leclerc topped Q2 while running the inters throughout, despite asking his Ferrari team to consider slicks as the track continued to dry.
While this was assessed at all teams, only the Aston Martin cars of Sebastian Vettel and Lance Stroll, plus Alfa Romeo’s Zhou Guanyu opted to risk the softs.
None of them went quicker than the inter runners, with Vettel blowing what had been a promising final lap by locking both his front wheels and sliding down the Turn 7 escape road.
That left him 14th ahead of Zhou who complained of having “no grip” on his slicks gamble, with Stroll ending up ahead in 12th.
Late jumps up the order from Gasly and Magnussen meant George Russell was shuffled down to a shock elimination in 11th for Mercedes, while Mick Schumacher was the other…
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