Felipe Massa looks to be planning a repeat of his Valencia performance after he took a comfortable pole position for the Singapore Grand Prix on Saturday evening.
It was a crucial drive by the Brazilian with front row of the grid likely to be decisive on the bumpy Marina Bay street circuit where overtaking will be extremely difficult.
His lap of 1:44.801 was 0.664 of a second ahead of the British world championship leader, who is one point in front of his rival in the title race with four Grand Prix left.
Defending world champion Kimi Raikkonen, desperate for a win here to keep alive his slim hopes of retaining his title, was third fastest for Ferrari and BMW Sauber’s Robert Kubica was fourth.
Heikki Kovalainen, in the second McLaren, was fifth ahead of Nick Heidfeld for BMW Sauber.
“The car was so nice to drive and it is so great that I managed to do a perfect lap,” said Massa.
“It was a great achievement. I made the corners perfect, so it is fantastic and one of the most incredible feelings a driver can have.”
It was the 27-year-old’s fifth pole of the year as he conquered driving at night for the first time.
“It is a difficult track to get every corner right but the lights were not a big problem,” he added.
Hamilton was happy to settle for second after almost missing the third qualifying session, and warned that overtaking would be almost impossible during Sunday’s race.
“I’m happy with the result considering,” he said.
“You won’t be able to overtake here, you can’t get close enough and it will be tough. I’ll just play it by ear and give it my best shot.”
Monza winner Sebastian Vettel was the only Red Bull-backed runner to make the top 10 this time, taking his Toro Rosso to seventh on 1m 46.244s ahead of Toyota’s Timo Glock (1m 46.328s) and the Williams duo of Nico Rosberg (1m 46.611s) and Kazuki Nakajima (a top 10 first timer with 1m 47.547s).
Q2 weeded out Toyota’s Jarno Trulli (1m 45.038s), Honda’s Jenson Button (1m 45.133s), Red Bull’s Mark Webber and David Coulthard (1m 45.212s and 1m 45.298s respectively), and the unfortunate Fernando Alonso, whose Renault quit on him in Turn 18 during his out lap.
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