Lewis Hamilton has vowed to "attack" the streets of Singapore, keen to build on his encouraging pace at Sepang last weekend. He also leapt to the defence of his Ferrari strategists, who were mocked for a tyre blunder that may have cost him a shot at winning.
The seven-time world champion flew through the pack to finish third, having dropped as low as 18th after Ferrari mistakenly put him on slick tyres on a still-wet Sepang track. But he insisted: "It was ultimately a mistake, but it's not the strategists.
"I think, unfortunately, my strategy team gets the brunt of [criticism for the] call. But in actual fact, the call didn't come from the strategist. The call comes from collectively, us working together. We make the decision together. We discuss it and we put all our ideas and information into the pot, whether that's good or not."
Hamilton defends strategy call
Hamilton said he had told the team to go with intermediate tyres, but was overruled. He added: "That's how you work as a team. You hope three people are more right than one. But in some scenarios, it's the other way around. And you were right and your gut feeling was right. And then you're like, 'Damn, I should have gone with my gut'. But everyone's generally trying to do the best they can."
The 41-year-old gave a promising preview of his chances at the Marina Bay circuit this weekend. Hamilton said: "Our car, it's generally good on street circuits, particularly when there's not particularly long straights.
"This is a high-drag circuit, so I'm hoping the advantage others have on those long straights kind of comes down a little bit and we can start matching them. We're here to attack. Qualifying is key, and it would be really great if we could start on the right foot and then just be attacking in qualifying."
Leclerc cautious on track layout
Team-mate Charles Leclerc agreed that this track should, in theory at least, suit Ferrari's car more than others. "It definitely is one of those tracks where the layout seems to be pretty good for us," the Monegasque said.
"Whether this will pay off or not… Budapest and Monaco were strong layouts for us on paper and it didn't go well. Silverstone was a bad layout on paper and it went really well. I don't know if it tells the full story but we'll give our best. Historically we've been quite strong here, but we cannot really rely on the past.
"We've got to do everything we can to be in the best possible situation. It's also true that the tendency lately has been that we've been losing a bit of performance compared to the guys in front, so to win will be very difficult."
Russell faces further penalties
George Russell's misery continues as he will serve grid penalties this weekend. Mercedes had hoped to wait until their upgraded engine is ready, but that won't be until at least the trip to Austin later this month. Russell needs new components now, after his power unit failure in Malaysia.
That means more penalty misery for him later this year too, as he'll need the upgraded parts to see him through to the end of the year. Russell said: "You get [a limit of] four engines a season, so six races on each, and we have seven races to the end. So I will be taking another penalty. The plan was always to go in Austin, and obviously Singapore is the second hardest track to overtake on on the calendar. So you would never choose to do it [here].
"But we have no engines because of all of the various failures, so there was no engine I could have reverted to from earlier in the season. With this failure, I had to take it." Russell will also revert to an older spec of his car as Mercedes try to figure out why their Malaysia upgrades didn't have the desired effect.
