Morning After: Perfect Hamilton Seizes the Advantage

Expected to be in an almighty tussle for pole in Singapore, Lewis Hamilton instead made it look easy.

Already one of the greatest qualifiers ever, on Saturday Hamilton delivered the latest in his long line of legendary hot laps, setting the standard with a time of 1:36.015 that was 3.476 better than last year's pole, 0.319s better than P2 Max Verstappen, and – most remarkably – 0.613s faster than P3 Sebastian Vettel.

Indeed, even Hamilton thought it was "one of the best – if not the best lap[s] I’ve ever done", and while you'd probably need a few solid days to review each of his 79 pole-positions to reach a decisive conclusion, considering the circumstances you'd have to assume it comes close.

Coming into this weekend, the perception was this race would be a golden chance for Ferrari to make-up ground to Mercedes. If not the fastest outright, certainly there was little argument the Scuderia had the best car for Marina Bay's myriad low-speed corners, a driver in Vettel known as something of a "Singapore specialist", and the memory of their quali beat-down from here last year to build off of. Instead, they finished six tenths down, once again out-executed by the Silver Arrows and Hamilton.

Where Vettel's lap suffered from some early understeer and a costly lock-up into turn 13, Hamilton never put a foot wrong. Normally on a 23-corner track, it's not unreasonable to expect a few minor slip-ups, but then again, there's nothing reasonable about the talent of men like Hamilton, and Saturday was just one of those days where it all came together for him.

What was once Ferrari's race to lose is now Mercedes', and if they do hold on, it will spell nothing short of a disaster for the Scuderia.

With a dry race, the theoretical quickest pit-stop strategies predicted by Pirelli are as follows: