Vettel seeks Singapore success to salvage season

Nico Rosberg eased Mercedes’ fears about its pace in Singapore by topping second practice, though teammate Lewis Hamilton’s disjointed session ended prematurely with a hydraulics issue.

On the similar Monaco circuit earlier this year, Red Bull had Mercedes’ measure and probably would have won if not for its pit-stop farce. “If we get everything right, I think we have a good shot”. “We are a group of winners, so if there is pressure on us to get it done this weekend, we will thrive on that”. He was within sight of the pitlane, and the session was put under Virtual Safety Car as his car was pushed back to the pits and into McLaren’s hands.

The final standings, especially in P2, are potentially misleading due to the fact that three elite drivers, and Singapore masters in Hamilton, Vettel and Ricciardo, made mistakes on their flying laps. “It’s hard for me to say now that we will be the No. 1 team this weekend, because we haven’t had a chance to race here yet”.

The Australian has pointed to the famed night race all season as his best shot at victory, particularly after his near-win at the Monaco GP in May. Fail to win here, and the Italian team will be staring at the very real prospect of another winless season to match 2014.

“This track was very good last year and we have improved from last year so it should be a reasonable track for us”.

It was in FP2 previous year where Mercedes’ struggles first became apparent in a weekend which saw the team qualify almost 1.5s off the pole and finish off the podium for the first time in the V6 era.

Mercedes has closely investigated what went wrong here, and it would be a surprise if it was as far off the pace in 2016 as it was in 2015. “For sure, but that is not going to change anytime soon”, said Hamilton. Felipe Massa and Valtteri Bottas took the next two spaces and, though Williams often makes a big step forward on Saturday it seems to have a lot of work to do to catch Force India overnight. In the meantime, the team has lost its highly-rated technical director in James Allison, has scored fewer podiums compared to the same point previous year and has slipped to third behind Red Bull.

“We were closing the gap past year but unfortunately that gap to the top is still there, sometimes bigger, sometimes smaller but still there”.