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The rain is falling hard now and the crews are desperately trying to cover up the cars on the grid. F1 correspondent Andrew Benson, who is in Singapore, says it's noticeably muggier today at the Marina Bay Street Circuit.

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The Singapore Grand Prix is the original night race in Formula 1 but today's sprint at Marina Bay is taking place in daylight hours at 5pm local time.

There is some rain around today for the shorter race, with temperatures reaching a high of 30C (and even warmer in the cockpit). But Singapore authorities are also keeping a close eye on the haze situation which has been caused by wildfires in Indonesia.

The sport has never called off a race due to air pollution, and the guidance is that F1 and governing body the FIA are monitoring the situation but it is below any rates of concern.

Uh-oh. The rain has started!

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The build-up to last week's race in Malaysia was hit with a software bug during the wet formation lap which left some cars struggling to move around the track. In Singapore, the timing screen glitched in SQ1, causing confusion, and drivers were also left with no overtake mode following the red-flag period in the same session.

In a statement, the FIA confirmed the overtake mode issue was a separate human error in race control. "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." it added.

SQ2 and SQ3 were unaffected.

The governing body said it acknowledged the "unfortunate" error had impacted some drivers, but Carlos Sainz, who was eliminated in SQ1 in P22, said he was "a bit confused why the sport keeps doing different things depending on who is out in Q1 or who is out in lap one."

The Williams driver said: "There was another software issue and 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."

Andrew Benson
BBC F1 correspondent in Singapore

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George Russell's performance compared with that of team-mate Kimi Antonelli - the Italian is starting seventh today - 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 specification here in Singapore in an attempt to better understand its performance but Antonelli ended the session 0.573 seconds behind Russell.

Antonelli, who leads the championship by 84 points going into the weekend, said the car is "very difficult, very unpredictable, very difficult to put a lap together."

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Max Verstappen said he was surprised to take pole position for the sprint race after beating George Russell to the punch by 0.120 seconds.

He faced a nervy wait to see if he would keep the 11th sprint pole of his career, though, while the stewards debated whether he had overtaken Lewis Hamilton under yellow flags brought out for Sergio Perez hitting the barriers.

The officials decided to take no further action, so now he's free to lead the field off the line at Marina Bay.

"We have some difficulties with the car in ride, as we know," said Verstappen after qualifying, "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 [on Saturday] is still the main goal and for us the start is always a critical point but at least a positive end to our day."

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If there is any drama is this shorter dash in Singapore, Red Bull's Isack Hadjar and Alpine's Pierre Gasly, who both had their lap times deleted for track limits in SQ3, are waiting in the wings to battle for points in ninth and 10th respectively.

1. Max Verstappen (Red Bull)

2. George Russell (Mercedes)

3. Charles Leclerc (Ferrari)

4. Oscar Piastri (McLaren)

5. Lando Norris (McLaren)

6. Lewis Hamilton (Ferrari)

7. Kimi Antonelli (Mercedes)

8. Liam Lawson (Racing Bulls)

Lorraine McKenna
BBC Sport Journalist

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Hello, folks. The Singapore Grand Prix is making its debut on the sprint calendar this year, hosting the sixth and final 100km race of the 2026 campaign.

On Friday, Max Verstappen secured pole position in sprint qualifying ahead of Mercedes' George Russell and Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc. The four-time world champion did have to visit the stewards after the session for an alleged yellow-flag infringement, though, but he was cleared of any wrongdoing so gets to keep his spot at the head of the grid.

There was a software glitch during yesterday's qualifying session as an engine settings issue affected some cars, and there was a problem with the timing system too.

Verstappen and Red Bull are on a high following victory at the Bahrain Grand Prix in Malaysia last weekend, and the Dutchman is the king of the shorter format, taking 13 wins since its introduction in 2021.