Verstappen takes Singapore sprint pole as stewards clear him over a yellow flag pass on Hamilton

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Max Verstappen took his first sprint pole of 2026 in Singapore with a lap of 1m31.156s, The Race reports. George Russell was only 0.120s behind in an older specification Mercedes, and he will take an engine penalty for Sunday's grand prix. Kimi Antonelli, in the upgraded Mercedes, was only seventh, almost seven tenths off pole. That is a surprising gap between the two cars

Charles Leclerc was third, with Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris fourth and fifth and Lewis Hamilton sixth. Isack Hadjar lost a place when his final lap was deleted for track limits. Franco Colapinto missed the top ten shoot out by 0.094s to Pierre Gasly. Williams had their worst qualifying of the season, with Alex Albon 19th and Carlos Sainz 22nd

Sergio Perez caused the red flag in the first part of qualifying when he hit the wall at Turn 5 in his Cadillac, leaving him 20th. That crash also led to the stewards' investigation into Verstappen. Debris from Perez's front wing brought out yellow flags, and Verstappen passed Hamilton in the yellow flag sector. Hamilton reported it over team radio

PlanetF1 reports that the stewards found Verstappen did breach the yellow flag rules, but decided not to penalise him. Telemetry showed he came off the throttle within about 40 metres of entering the yellow sector. Hamilton had slowed to under 60 km/h, so the closing speed was enormous. The stewards called the overtake an unfortunate consequence of that speed difference, and Verstappen said he thought he had passed before the yellow but just wanted to be safe

Albon summed up Williams' day, saying he thought they had another lap and did not know it was just one. He also complained of a completely different car to practice. For Verstappen, a sprint pole at Marina Bay is a big boost. Russell taking an engine penalty means the grand prix could look very different from the sprint

Was the stewards' decision on Verstappen fair? And how do you see the sprint going?

Verstappen beats Russell's old-spec Mercedes to Singapore sprint polewww.the-race.com