Join now and get your first month for just $1.<\/a><\/p>\n\u201cWe entered qualifying to achieve a pole position,\u201d Stella told reporters. \u201cBut we see a pattern now where we (struggle) with lots of braking, bumps and kerbs.\u201d <\/p>\n
‘Car didn’t have enough in it for pole’ | 01:03<\/p>\n
![](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/1759535888_361_poster-fallback.png\"\/)
<\/p>\n
George Russell took pole for Sunday\u2019s race in the Mercedes, as he had done earlier this season on another street circuit in Canada where he went on to win.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe saw in Canada and Baku and now today, that on this track layout, other cars are competitive,\u201d admitted Stella The McLarens have dominated for most of 2025 but third-placed Verstappen, in the resurgent Red Bull, has closed the gap on Piastri and Norris to 69 and 44 points respectively with seven races to go.<\/p>\n
Piastri tops chaotic Singapore P2 | 01:59<\/p>\n
Piastri crashed on the first lap in the most recent race in Baku and Norris trailed home seventh as Verstappen continued to whittle away their lead at the top.<\/p>\n
Starting from the front row alongside Russell on Sunday, Verstappen will have in sight a first Singapore victory that would further fuel his hopes of completing a famous comeback and securing a fifth consecutive world title.<\/p>\n
Norris admitted that the McLarens were now in a fight.<\/p>\n
\u201cOthers have improved. Mercedes have done a good job. Red Bull have been good the last two weekends,\u201d said the Englishman who won from pole position in Singapore 12 months ago.<\/p>\n
\u201cSingapore has always been a bit of a weird one. We know we struggle whenever we struggle with the front tyres.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think we understand when you put two and two together, why we struggled. The front of the car is not strong enough, too much understeer so you have to make compromises.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe tables have turned and everyone seems to be struggling a lot with the front tyres this weekend.\u201d Piastri seemed bewildered at being four-tenths of a second off of Russell\u2019s pace.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think the start of qualifying we seemed pretty good, and then everyone else just seemed to find a lot of time and we didn\u2019t,\u201d said Piastri.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat was a bit of a surprise, but it\u2019s been a little bit weird this weekend. The tyres have been pretty tricky to switch on.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"McLaren team principal Andrea Stella said on Saturday that he knows why his championship-leading team are struggling at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":190696,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[573],"tags":[2095,13273,1724,64,63,961,120817,120814,120813,2065,120818,52494,2057,817,120815,813,816,120816,3875,2105,2328,1737,825,932,2041,2067,16280,942,2812,3595,85,100051,13773,22493,120819,12000],"class_list":["post-190695","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-america","tag-andrea-stella","tag-asia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-azerbaijan","tag-being-four-tenths","tag-bryn-lennon","tag-bumpy-street-circuit","tag-canada","tag-championship-leading-team","tag-consecutive-world-title","tag-europe","tag-f1","tag-famous-comeback","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-front-tyres","tag-george-russell","tag-getty-images-inc","tag-italy","tag-lando-norris","tag-max-verstappen","tag-monza","tag-north-america","tag-northern-america","tag-pole-position","tag-singapore","tag-south-eastern-asia","tag-southern-europe","tag-sports","tag-street-circuit","tag-team-principal","tag-team-principals-press","tag-track-layout","tag-western-asia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190695","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=190695"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190695\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/190696"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=190695"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=190695"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=190695"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}