SINGAPORE -- After two close battles with Charles Leclerc at the last two races, Lewis Hamilton looks set to lock horns with Red Bull's Max Verstappen in Singapore. The nature of the circuit, which includes mostly medium and low speed corners, plays to the strengths of the Mercedes and Red Bull while exposing the weakness of the Ferrari.
That much was clear from the time sheets on Friday evening. Hamilton led Verstappen by 0.184s, with Ferrari's Sebastian Vettel 0.818s off the pace in third. Verstappen was actually faster than Hamilton through the first two sectors of the lap and lost all of his time to the Mercedes in the final sector where he came across traffic.