Nico Rosberg hailed one of his "top three laps ever" as he capped his 200th F1 weekend with pole position for the Singapore Grand Prix.
Rosberg was in sublime form on Saturday evening in Singapore, qualifying over half a second clear of Daniel Ricciardo and 0.7s ahead of Mercedes teammate Lewis Hamilton. Mercedes had been uncertain whether it had solved the problems which saw it struggle so dramatically across the weekend last year but Rosberg looked in control throughout the evening session.
"Definitely happy with that one for my 200th grand prix," Rosberg said. "For sure it was one of my top three laps ever so happy with that, it really went well and at times it wasn't clear in qualifying how we were going to stack up against Red Bull for example, because they were very quick on the super-soft in Q2 for example so I knew I had to give it everything and really pull one out of the bag, which was cool, a great feeling."
Behind Rosberg, Ricciardo will line up on super-soft tyres, as will fourth-placed Max Verstappen in the other Red Bull, after using the red-striped compound for their quickest Q2 effort. However, Rosberg is not too worried about strategy after seeing how Mercedes solved last year's problems.
"Strategy is one of our many strengths so I don't have any concerns there. Of course we need to work out the best plan for tomorrow.
"It shows the quality of our team with this being our most difficult track last year, we really came away and learnt what went wrong, turned it around and now really dominated the weekend up until now. Last year we were nowhere in qualifying so it really shows the quality of the team to be able to understand something like that and turn it around in such a way."