Mercedes may have won last year’s Singapore Grand Prix, but the track hasn’t played to their strengths in recent seasons.

Three years ago, in the middle of an otherwise dominant campaign, the silver cars qualified 1.4 seconds off the pace. Last year they were relegated to the third row of the grid by the Ferraris and the Red Bulls.

But this year it seems they may have finally cracked the secret of Singapore. Lewis Hamilton was just 11-thousandths of a second off the quickest time on Friday.

“We were doing some experiments and I think we got some good results from it,” he explained. “Then we’ve gone into practice two with the changes that we’ve made and surprisingly it’s quite close to the Ferraris.”

Hamilton tempered his enthusiasm: “I don’t know if that’s real or not, we’ll find out tomorrow. But the car’s definitely feeling better than it has done in the past.”

Valtteri Bottas, however, described the car’s performance in high-downforce trim as a “massive improvement” since earlier in the season.

The defending champions were widely expected to be third among the ‘big three’ teams this weekend, with Ferrari and Red Bull vying for top honours. But it seems Red Bull’s concern about the progress their rivals have made this year is being borne out.

On one-lap pace the RB14s look like they may be edged back to the third row. Asked if he expects to repeat his front row start from last year, Max Verstappen said: “I don’t think so”. Over a stint, however, they may be able to get back into contention.

What’s turned things around for Mercedes? “Both cars had too much understeer in the first session which we were able to dial out during the break,” explained technical director James Allison.

“We got the car pretty happy for a single lap in the second session. Likewise, the long-run pace seems to be in the mix. There is still more work to do. We want to cure some nervousness under braking and Valtteri’s balance wasn’t quite right in his long runs. But if we compare the situation to what we experienced last year, then today’s running makes us more confident that we are in the hunt this weekend.”

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Meanwhile Sebastian Vettel was unable to do a race simulation because he bounced his SF71-H off a barrier. The serious action hasn’t begun yet and this is already starting to look like the familiar 2018 story of Mercedes capitalising on Vettel’s mistakes.

But all is far from lost yet for the Ferrari driver – his form on this track is unrivalled. And, as he pointed out, at this stage in the season the information gathered on Friday is not as critical as it is earlier in the year “By now I think we have quite good experience reading into the others what they did and so on, reading into their runs with tyres which obviously will be key for Sunday,” he said. “We can recover most of it tomorrow.”

A common denominator throughout the field is that the hyper soft tyre isn’t performing well over a long stint. However it is around 1.6 seconds per lap faster than the next-softest tyre, the ultra-soft. Given how quickly the track ‘evolves’ in Singapore, the front-runners may consider it too risky to use anything but the hyper-soft in Q2.

Most of the rest of the field is in the hunt for the remaining four places in Q3, with two exceptions.

Williams don’t like high-downforce tracks and are half a second slower than anyone. Lance Stroll’s struggle was made even more difficult when his right-rear brake duct ingested a tear=off – possibly his own – causing a fire.

Toro Rosso, meanwhile, are hoping that two runs on the hyper-soft in final practice helps them solve the mystery of their lack of one-lap pace. Singapore’s short straights and slow corners makes for the kind of track the STR13 usually thrives on, so keep a close eye on their progress tomorrow.

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Longest stint comparison – second practice

This chart shows all the drivers’ lap times (in seconds) during their longest unbroken stint. Very slow laps omitted. Scroll to zoom, drag to pan, right-click to reset:

Complete practice times

Quotes: Dieter Rencken

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2018 Singapore Grand Prix