Lewis Hamilton’s gold helmet gleamed under Marina Bay’s floodlights, but the lap time never quite matched the shine. Sixth on the grid for Singapore — the first time he’s ever started outside the top five here — and the Ferrari driver was refreshingly blunt about why. In his view, Ferrari’s qualifying days are getting compromised before he even sees Turn 1.
It’s the queue.
The modern qualifying ritual is now as choreographed as a formation lap. Everyone wants the same out-lap window, six or seven seconds of clean air, and no one wants to be the first to tow the rest of the field. So they stack. And when you’re stacked, you’re static. And when you’re static, tyres go cold.
Hamilton says that’s been a theme at Ferrari all season — and one that bit again in Singapore.
“The car’s been feeling good generally most of the weekend, just disappointed with the result,” he said after Q3. “In Q1 the tyres were there. Then we get into the next session’s queue… we’re often the last in line. You’re sitting, you’re losing a lot of temperature, and every time we do that we’re just falling further back. It happens every weekend.”
It’s the unsaid truth about Marina Bay: track position starts in the pit lane. Teams have learned the hard way that a perfect tyre window on the out-lap is worth as much as a trick new front wing once you hit the stopwatch. If you’re at the wrong end of the release train — whether because of your pit box location or timing decisions — you end up nursing a set that’s shed a few degrees before you’ve even started the push. Regain that heat and you risk overworking the rubber when it matters most.
“We’re losing so much temperature — five, six degrees, maybe more — and it’s really hard to get it back without taking it out of the tyre on the out-lap,” Hamilton explained. “I think the guys on pole went earlier, with less waiting. That’s an area we can improve.”
That pole, claimed by George Russell, underlined the fine margins. The Mercedes driver threaded a lap around the walls that was good enough to keep Max Verstappen at bay, with Oscar Piastri slotting his McLaren into third. Ferrari had looked lively in practice and early in qualifying, but the red cars never quite carried the bite into Q3 when it mattered.
Hamilton wasn’t pinning everything on queuing, either. He pointed to the development race that’s kicked on after the summer, and Ferrari’s relative lack of fresh parts compared to the cars he’s chasing.
“Red Bull had an upgrade, Mercedes have found something, and we haven’t,” he said. “We’re fighting with what we have. Everyone’s trying so hard, but it’s disappointing to finish where we have today when there was potential to be higher.”
There’s also the story of a driver with a multi-year love affair with this circuit. Hamilton has usually been a lock for the sharp end in Singapore — ruthless on out-laps, razor-sharp in the final sector. Sixth, then, is an outlier. But it’s not fatal.
On Sunday night, the warm-up headache flips into a race-day puzzle. Track position is king here, but so is tyre life if you’re stuck in turbulent air. Ferrari will need to nail the launch and get creative on timing to avoid falling into the same pattern — especially if an early Safety Car turns the race into a game of musical chairs. The undercut can be powerful at Marina Bay, but only if your out-lap is clean and the tyres switch on fast. That’s the very area Hamilton wants tightened up.
The gold lid? That part worked. Hamilton’s special-edition helmet popped on camera all evening, a nod to the occasion and a reminder that even in a demanding, physically brutal session, he’s still carrying plenty of swagger. The stopwatch doesn’t lie, though, and the seven-time World Champion is acutely aware his Ferrari needs a little less queuing and a little more crispness when the tyre blankets come off.
If Ferrari can straighten out the sequencing — get him out sooner, keep heat in the tyres, stop him from playing caboose in the out-lap train — the lap time is probably already in the car. The question is whether they can rewire that routine quickly enough to matter under the lights.
For now, Hamilton starts from row three with work to do and a point to prove. Singapore has a habit of rewarding patience and punishing hesitation. The queue begins long before the lights go out; Ferrari’s job is making sure Hamilton isn’t stuck at the back of it again.
