2026 Singapore GP Qualifying Preview & Tips – JP
2026 Singapore GP Qualifying Preview
James Punt called it right with George Russell in the sprint but unfortunately he spun off early after taking the lead. Fingers crossed for a change of luck this afternoon. His 2026 Singapore GP Qualifying preview and tips are below.
2026 Singapore GP Qualifying
The Sprint race was a bit of a farce. Russell got the lead, crashed, and that was that, apart from lots of DNFs and the two McLarens crashing into each other.
We now have the qualifying for the GP. It is tempting to think that the qualifying for the Sprint will be repeated, but from the five sprint weekends in 2026, that has only happened once, in Canada, where the top 3 in sprint Q were the top three in qualifying proper.
In the other four, the driver who qualified second in the Sprint Q went on to qualify first in the GP qualifying. So that’s George Russell nailed on then? Obviously not. His car is being put back together and he is going to start from the back in any case. I assume he will just take part in Q1 and that will be that.
Max Fav
It looks like this qualifying is between Verstappen and the two Ferrari’s. Verstappen is the 2.10 favourite, Leclerc 5.50 and Hamilton 10.00. Leclerc was +0.243s behind Max yesterday, Hamilton +0.546s. Leclerc said that the team should be able to tinker with the set up to be a little faster, but he wasn’t overly confident of overturning Verstappen’s lead.
Antonelli is continuing to run the new spec car and he has been well off the pace. The McLarens should be OK to run in qualifying, but Norris is on the naughty step. He just handed more points to Red Bull, who are closing in on McLaren’s third place.
It is all going very nicely for Verstappen, with his toughest opponents, Mercedes, in a heap. Ferrari are likely to just come up short again.
2026 Singapore GP Qualifying Tip: 1 point Max Verstappen to be the fastest qualifier @ 2.10 generally available
There isn’t enough time to look at any side markets, but we will have a full race day update tomorrow when things are less frantic.
