RaceFans has reported:

Lewis Hamilton said a last-minute set-up adjustment unsettled his Ferrari during the final part of qualifying for the Singapore Grand Prix on Saturday, leaving him third on the grid after Max Verstappen took pole position. Charles Leclerc, Hamilton’s Ferrari teammate, qualified ahead of him in second. Hamilton said the car had performed well in the first two qualifying sessions before the change tipped its balance.

“It’s just balance,” Hamilton said after qualifying. “The car felt good. I think my team, the engineers, did a fantastic job, as well as the mechanics, between the sessions. “The car felt amazing in Q1 and Q2, and when I finished the laps, I was like, “She’s got more in her.” And the only way in order to try and extract that is to try and add wing.”

Hamilton said the added front-wing angle was intended to help extract more performance, but left the car difficult to control. “In doing so, I think it just tipped it over the edge. It was only like one hole [of front wing angle] or something like that, but it was just on the knife point, and after that then the car was just snappy, and none of the laps in Q3 are any good. So, I’m grateful to be third, to be honest, given that those laps weren’t very good.”

The result followed a strong start by Hamilton in Saturday’s sprint race, when he moved from sixth on the grid to third. Verstappen started that sprint from pole position. Hamilton said the opening conditions for Sunday’s race would differ from the wet start he experienced in the sprint, and noted that the right side of the starting grid could offer an advantage.

“The right side is hopefully a little bit better to start on,” he said. “It’s obviously a short start, the start that I had was obviously in the wet, so it’s much different when it’s dry. And I think tomorrow is [supposed to be] dry.”

Hamilton acknowledged that Ferrari would face a difficult task against Verstappen, while pointing to the possibility of co-operation between the two Ferrari drivers. “It’ll be very hard for us to beat Max tomorrow, but there’s two Ferraris there, and I think hopefully there might be opportunities for us to work together to try and apply the pressure. “They’re very, very quick, but I think we have the car in a good place that hopefully we can at least hold on.”

Qualifying set Verstappen on pole ahead of the two Ferraris for the Singapore race. Hamilton said he was thankful to secure third despite judging his Q3 laps to be poor after the balance change. The report was written by Keith Collantine, who established RaceFans in 2005, when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Collantine, a lifelong motor sport fan and former motoring journalist, began running the site full-time in 2010 to focus on his passion for motor racing.