Hamilton beats them all in six-way scrap for Singapore pole!

Lewis Hamilton will start on pole for the Singapore Grand Prix after a monster lap put him clear of his challengers in a six-way battle for pole, Max Verstappen will line-up second with Sebastian Vettel in third.

A late scare for Sebastian Vettel before qualifying meant that his mechanics were frantically working on his car just 15 minutes before the session went green, an apparent battery issue was fixed in time for the start of the session.

Mercedes opted to run the ultrasoft tyres whereas everyone else ran the hypersoft tyres for their first run. Hamilton’s first time was 1.5 seconds off of the pace set by Daniel Ricciardo on the pink-walled tyres.

Lance Stroll was the first driver to fall foul of the new yellow line on the exit of turn seven and had his first time deleted as a result.

Valtteri Bottas and Hamilton improved on their second runs but were by no means safe from exiting Q1 should the track improve before everyone’s final runs.

Fernando Alonso, Nico Hulkenberg, Charles Leclerc and Marcus Ericsson all improved to push the championship leader down to 14th but nobody else could to Mercedes’ relief.

It meant that Lance Stroll, Sergey Sirotkin, Stoffel Vandoorne, Brendon Hartley and Kevin Magnussen were eliminated from the first qualifying session.

Q2 got underway with Ferrari going out first on the ultrasoft tyres whilst Mercedes sent out Hamilton on hypersofts, race strategy already at the forefront of the championship teams’ minds.

Raikkonen understeered through turn eight and abandoned his first lap on the ultrasofts whilst Vettel was left 1.5 seconds off of the pacesetter Hamilton’s fastest time.

Red Bull burst onto the scene with Ricciardo almost matching Hamilton’s benchmark before teammate Verstappen beat it by 0.130s setting up a six-way scrap for pole position come Q3.

Ferrari was forced back out on the fastest tyres with their initial laps not good enough to get into the final qualifying session.

Vettel caught traffic through a very busy final sector of the lap and only managed to go fifth fastest on his second run but made it into Q3.

Alonso, Carlos Sainz, Charles Leclerc, Ericsson and Pierre Gasly were the drivers eliminated in Q2, Alonso replying “Nice” over team radio, pleased with his efforts.

Everyone was out for the start of Q3 apart from Romain Grosjean in the Haas, Kimi Raikkonen was not hanging around either, overtaking Sainz and Hamilton to get to the front of the queue and avoid the traffic.

Hamilton set the timing screens ablaze with a 1:36.0s in run number one to take provisional pole by 0.3 seconds from Hamilton and over half a second to everybody else.

Mercedes sent both of their drivers out first to avoid the traffic on run number two ahead of anyone else, Ferrari and Red Bull filtering onto the track soon after.

Vettel asked to be fed into space unlike his first run and was out half a lap behind the head of the queue. Nobody could match Hamilton's time though, the pole man pitting after a mistake at turn seven and watched as his challengers couldn't beat him.

The start will be huge after a championship-calibre lap from the pole position specialist.