Max Verstappen on sprint pole after ‘error’ in race control, Oscar Piastri gets fourth

Max Verstappen has lit up the streets of Singapore to pip George Russell to sprint pole while Australian hope Oscar Piastri forced his way into fourth place.

The action was overshadowed when the cars’ settings were wrongly changed by race control, affecting the cars and blamed for some drivers being eliminated from the session early.

Verstappen who claimed his first win of the F1 season at the Bahrain Grand Prix held in Malaysia last weekend, was in imperious form again as his Red Bull showed further signs of progress.

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“It is always close in Singapore, your lap — you are pushing as close as you can to the walls. I did not expect this, very happy to be first,” Verstappen said.

Russell saved his best until last but was unable to topple the four-time world champion, finishing 0.120 seconds adrift as he bumped Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc down to third.

Piastri claimed fourth for Saturday’s 21-lap dash, ahead of McLaren teammate Lando Norris and Ferrari’s Lewis Hamilton.

Runaway championship leader Kimi Antonelli was off the pace throughout the session and could manage only seventh – 0.693sec off the pace to raise further doubts over the upgrade Mercedes brought last weekend.

Antonelli has one hand on the title after team-mate Russell’s power-unit failure in the closing stages last week gave the Italian an 84-point lead with just seven rounds to run.

Russell, running the Mercedes car without the upgrade, will start the main race on Sunday from the back of the grid after taking a new power unit, in a further blow to his slender title hopes.

Verstappen was summoned by the stewards in an investigation into whether he overtook Lewis Hamilton earlier in the qualifying session under yellow flags, but he was not penalised.

Cars were down on power for several minutes in the first part of Friday’s qualifying session because “overtake mode” — an electrical power boost activated by the drivers — was disabled.

Williams team principal James Vowles said the issue played a role in both of his drivers being eliminated, with Alex Albon 19th and Carlos Sainz, Jr. 22nd.

The FIA blamed “a human error in race control” which meant cars were blocked from using overtake mode after the session was briefly red-flagged. The setting was then switched back on for 27 seconds, and switched off again.

“The FIA acknowledges that this unfortunate human error had an impact on the performance of certain cars based on the timing of their run and their position around the lap,” the governing body said.

It’s the latest in a series of issues with the software which governs the 2026 cars’ electrical power and comes five days after cars crawled to a halt in the rain in Malaysia, delaying the race start.

Leclerc led Hamilton in a Ferrari one-two in a second session delayed by 16 minutes after Verstappen had topped the first, to hint at an open fight for pole.

So it proved but it was Verstappen who pulled the stellar lap out the bag in the closing stages and the four-time world champion will hope to continue his step forward with sprint victory on Saturday.