Max Verstappen’s one-lap gamble – and what Pirelli reveals about his Singapore sprint pole

Outubro 9, 2026 lojamais44@gmail.com

Although it will not officially go down in the history books as a pole position, Friday in Singapore did produce a first: for the first time in his Formula 1 career, Max Verstappen finished a qualifying session at the Marina Bay Street Circuit on top.

It underlines the RB22’s strength in slow-speed corners, of which there are plenty around the Singapore street track, although Verstappen himself was still somewhat surprised by the result.

“It’s always close here in Singapore. You’re pushing as hard as you think is possible, close to the walls in places. Once we bolted on the soft tyres, it felt like the car was coming alive a little bit more, but I did not expect this”, the Dutchman said.

Asked why he had not expected to set the fastest time, Verstappen pointed to the limitations that are still inherent in the RB22 – particularly when it comes to handling the bumps and kerbs.

“I think the last two races we have been a lot stronger, but this track still highlights a few little weaknesses in our car. But thankfully we managed to drive with them as well as possible.”

It earned Verstappen sprint pole with a margin of 0.120 seconds over his closest challenger George Russell. Charles Leclerc followed 0.243 seconds behind, ahead of both McLarens.

All four of those drivers approached the final part of sprint qualifying differently from Verstappen, who completed just one flying lap on the soft tyres at the end.

Max Verstappen, Red Bull Racing

Photo by: Simon Galloway / LAT Images via Getty Images

That variation in approaches during the final segment of Friday’s qualifying session surprised tyre supplier Pirelli.

“What was interesting from our side is that in SQ3, with the soft compound, we had three different approaches for the top three in the classification”, Pirelli’s chief engineer Simone Berra said.

“Basically Verstappen did an out-push-in and was the fastest. Russell decided to do out-push-double cool and then push again. And Leclerc did out-push-one cool and then push. Different approaches and in the end with this low degradation and the possibility to recover performance, all three worked well.”

The idea behind Red Bull’s approach was simple: to make use of the tyres’ peak performance when the track was at its best – although the latter was relative, as Singapore’s street circuit offered less grip than Pirelli had expected due to the enormous amount of dust.

Red Bull’s approach appears to have contributed to Verstappen’s advantage, but when Motorsport.com put that to Berra, he explained that it had not proved to be the main performance differentiator.

“I don’t think that one of the three approaches was best compared to the others, honestly. It’s just a matter of how the car performed and also driver-related, I would say. This is a street circuit so the drivers increase their confidence lap by lap”, Berra said.

“Some drivers prefer to have a first push, then some cool-down procedure and then push again, while in my opinion Max preferred just to go and push as much as possible. That’s a different approach from a driver’s perspective.”

Max Verstappen, Red Bull Racing

Photo by: Sam Bloxham / LAT Images via Getty Images

According to Berra, it also comes down to a driver’s mindset. The approach involving multiple push laps gave them the opportunity to set a banker lap first, taking some pressure off the final attempt.

The approach with just one flying lap was riskier: not only because of the possibility of a yellow or red flag, but also in terms of track limits – something Isack Hadjar and Pierre Gasly experienced first-hand.

However, Pirelli emphasised that Verstappen was ultimately the fastest on merit and that the different run plans cannot fully explain his advantage.

“In terms of tyre temperatures and peak grip, I think you can have a good performance over multiple laps. You even could improve on a second attempt with used tyres, so that was not a big gain for Max. It was very interesting because he decided to have just one shot and it worked well.”

According to team principal Laurent Mekies, the fact that Red Bull managed to secure sprint pole on merit is all the more encouraging given how bumpy the circuit proved to be on Friday.

“It was a tough FP1 this morning on both cars. It’s difficult to find the right balance around this track. Lots of bumps, it’s very, very bumpy”, the French team principal said.

“We are struggling a lot with the bumps, but Max, Isack and the engineers did a very good job between FP1 and SQ. They managed to improve the car.