Verstappen on sprint pole after another settings issue

Red Bull's Max Verstappen beat Mercedes driver George Russell to sprint pole at the Singapore Grand Prix.

Verstappen, fresh from his and Red Bull's first victory of the season in Malaysia last weekend, was 0.12 seconds quicker than the Briton, with Ferrari's Charles Leclerc third.

McLaren's Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris were fourth and fifth ahead of Ferrari's Lewis Hamilton, who went early in final qualifying and fell down the order from initially being second behind Leclerc.

Championship leader Kimi Antonelli, using the Mercedes upgrade that underperformed in Malaysia while Russell is on the previous specification, could manage only seventh.

And there were further glitches with the engine settings provided by governing body the FIA five days after the formation laps in the wet in Malaysia saw cars reduced to crawling speed as a result of a software bug.

The settings issue in Singapore, which was combined with a glitch in the F1 timing system that delayed the start of second qualifying, affected all cars but had a bigger impact on some drivers than others, depending on the timing of their runs.

Williams driver Carlos Sainz, who was knocked out in the first session, said: "We were on the bad end of it, and for whatever reason, the FIA, like in Malaysia, again didn't decide to do sporting equity and were happy to do half of the quali with cars with higher power than the other half of the cars.

"A bit confused why the sport keeps doing different things depending on who is out in Q1 or who is out in lap one."

Racing Bulls' Arvid Lindblad was also affected and was knocked out in the first session.

The problem involved the settings being different before and after a red flag caused by a crash for Sergio Perez's Cadillac and left drivers complaining of reduced power.

It involved overtake mode - which allows an extra 0.5MJ of energy to be harvested - being switched on and off again in the space of 28 seconds.

The FIA said in a statement: "During the first period of sprint qualifying there was a human error in race control unrelated to the timing issue also encountered in SQ1.

"This issue in question meant overtake mode was not available after the red flag period during SQ1.

"When it became apparent that overtake mode was not active after the restart, it was then activated for a period of 27 seconds before being deactivated 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 second and third periods of sprint qualifying were not affected."

The FIA system automatically disables overtake mode when there is a red flag. A pop-up then appears on the screen asking whether officials want to re-enable it.

This was ignored, then overtake mode was reactivated before being disabled again, on the basis that it was fairer to do so than leave it enabled.

Verstappen's pole lap appeared to be further confirmation of Red Bull's resurgence after his dominant win in Malaysia but he faces an investigation for overtaking under yellow flags shown before the first session was stopped for the Perez incident.

The four-time champion said he had not believed pole was possible before qualifying.

"We have some difficulties with the car in ride, as we know," he said, "but at least when we went to the soft tyres (in the final session), it made the car a bit more stable in places where before you were a bit unsure.

"I did not expect this but you take it, I'm happy for sure. Qualifying tomorrow is still the main goal and for us the start is always a critical point but at least a positive end to our day."

Russell's performance compared with that of Antonelli raises further doubts about the efficacy of the Mercedes upgrade introduced in Malaysia.

It was their biggest car update since the Canadian Grand Prix in May but team boss Toto Wolff said at Sepang that it had appeared to take them backwards rather than forwards.

Mercedes split the car spec here in Singapore in an attempt to better understand its performance but Antonelli ended the session 0.573secs behind Russell.

The Briton said: "As a team there is still nothing telling us it isn't working but it's all driven by the stopwatch and, yeah, the stopwatch hasn't been great for the upgrade yet. Maybe tomorrow's a different day."

Antonelli, who leads the championship by 84 points going into the weekend, said: "Already FP1 I was struggling and there is still a lot to understand about this package. Really the car is very difficult, very unpredictable, very difficult to put a lap together. It's a shame. I was coming with high hopes but so far it has been very difficult.

"It's going to be a difficult weekend unless we can pull something out tomorrow. Other than that it is going very tricky. I don't really see where we can find 0.7secs but you never know."

Wolff said before sprint qualifying: "The new car seems to be a little more tricky to drive. Not saying it's necessarily slower, because there will be goodness in it, but maybe we haven't just found a way of putting it all together and tuning it. The older car is a bit more stable, grippy, but that is really just one data point."

Leclerc was 0.243secs off pole, and ruing what he said was Ferrari "losing a little bit of our raw performance" in the past three or four races.

However, he added: "Still I feel there is potential in the car and maybe tomorrow we can be there or thereabouts in fighting for pole."

Hamilton said: "We did a slightly different run plan to the others. It was my choice, but I think we got that wrong. But ultimately, the car was very oversteery on that lap. If the rears [tyres] are not ready or they are overheating, it's difficult to say. But it was very snappy and oversteery in the lap overall."

1. Max Verstappen (Red Bull) - 1:31.156

2. George Russell (Mercedes) +0.120

3. Charles Leclerc (Ferrari) +0.243

4. Oscar Piastri (McLaren) +0.298

5. Lando Norris (McLaren) +0.431

6. Lewis Hamilton (Ferrari) +0.546

7. Kimi Antonelli (Mercedes) +0.693

8. Liam Lawson (Racing Bulls) +1.185

9. Isack Hadjar (Red Bull) lap time deleted

10. Pierre Gasly (Alpine) lap time deleted