During Friday's FP1 and FP2 sessions at the Marina Bay Street Circuit, Max Verstappen and his teammate Sergio Perez complained about having very little grip as both seemed to be much slower than expected.

The reigning champion was very disappointed with his RB20 at the end on Friday as the performance didn’t look very promising for the Milton-Keynes team this weekend.

On Saturday, Perez continued to have a tough time, which caused him to drop out in Q2 during qualifying. He will start the Singapore Grand Prix from P13.

However, Verstappen, who currently leads the championship ahead of Norris, had a much better performance. He was able to improve and ended up being the closest pole position competitor to Norris and secured a second place for himself on tomorrow’s grid.

Especially after that difficult Friday, Verstappen was happy with the outcome of Saturday’s qualifying.

“I think the whole of qualifying actually went quite well, we managed to improve the car run after run. I’m happy to be on the front row if you look at where we came from yesterday.

“Q3 was tough [after Carlos Sainz’s crash], your lap gets canceled with a double yellow, then everyone only has one run and you don’t want to overdo it so you want to stay within the limit. I’ll take second, I’m happy with that.”

“Here we are, second. Tomorrow, of course, [it’s] a bit difficult to say – a lot of things can happen, but at least we have a shot at it like this.”

Heading into the Singapore Grand Prix, Red Bull sits 20 points behind McLaren in the Constructor’s Championship standings and probably won’t get the chance to change that tomorrow as Sergio Perez is not likely to score high points due to his bad starting position.

However, Max Verstappen will try to extend the lead in the championship from Norris, who starts just ahead of the Dutchman with an exciting battle between these two being more than promising.