Mercedes boss Toto Wolff believes Lewis Hamilton’s stunning pole position lap at the Singapore Grand Prix was the best lap he has ever seen.
After trailing Ferrari and Red Bull for much of practice, Hamilton stunned everyone to take pole, beating Max Verstappen by 0.3s. Hamilton then converted pole into a comfortable victory to extend his championship lead over Sebastian Vettel to 40 points with only six rounds remaining.
When asked about Hamilton’s performance in qualifying after his seventh win of 2018, Wolff told Sky Sports: “For me and I am not saying this lightly, it was the best lap I have ever seen in a Formula One car. We had a long discussion, him and me yesterday, and he said it felt so real.
“He couldn’t replicate it afterwards so I think this is a lap that is going to go down in the history books.”
Going into the weekend, Mercedes was expected to struggle for pace due to its historic struggles around low-speed corners and street circuits. Instead, the German manufacturer was the team to beat in Singapore and Wolff believes it was a significant weekend for the team in solving its car’s weaknesses.
“Yes it feels significant, not for the championship but it feels significant because we’ve understood the car in Singapore,” Wolff added. “It was won on merit, on real pace and I think we have the right clues now and let’s see how we can translate it into the end of the season.
“There are six races with 25 points [per race] to score. You can see in Austria we had a DNF, you can see how quickly it goes so we must not take our foot off the throttle.”