Singapore GP Formula 1 Lewis Hamilton
Lewis Hamilton grabs pole at the Singapore GP! Reuters

The 2014 Formula 1 Singapore Grand Prix at the Marina Bay Street Circuit is Sunday, Sept. 21, at 7:30 am EDT. The Singapore GP will be shown on NBC this Sunday morning but for race fans out there that will not have access to NBC Sports when the lights go out, be sure to catch the live stream online by signing up for NBC Sports LiveExtra here.

Not too long ago, the Mercedes F1 team claimed that there wasn't a track did not suit their cars. No track challenged the taunt from team Mercedes quite like Singapore this week. In the past, qualifying had always been a Rosberg vs. Hamilton show. This time, the pace of the super soft Pirelli tires have been enormously strong for all the teams across the board.

Ferrari, Red Bull, Williams, and Mercedes were all in a scrap for pole. In fact, even Kimi Raikkonen, who struggled for most of the season, managed to set provisional pole at one point of the qualifying session. However, it was at the last we honestly didn't know who would take pole until the last 5 seconds of Q3. First, Felipe Massa stunned with some serious pace in the Williams. Next, the crowd really came alive when Daniel Ricciardo put his Red Bull on pole with only seconds to spare. Nico Rosberg took pole away from Ricciardo to put Mercedes back on top, but it was Lewis Hamilton that grabbed pole by beating Rosberg by just 0.007s.

“As a driver through the weekend you plan to have the last lap as your fastest lap,” Hamilton said. “It's when the track is at its best, it's when you've got the configurations as close to perfect as possible, so that's really the lap you want to do it on.

“The others have just obviously taken a step, it's a real, real surprise," said Lewis Hamilton, regarding the pace of the other teams. "I'm sure the team is surprised as I am really surprised to see Ferrari really competing over the lap, which is great to see. Also Williams and Red Bull, so I think it's great. That's probably the most exciting qualifying session that I've had for a long time where there's a lot of people really in the mix and you have to be so on it.”

In regards to his own performance, Hamilton believes that he's got a couple extra tenths that he has yet to put on the table:

“I didn't really have a clean lap through the whole of qualifying The last one was the cleanest, but when you do your first lap you get your lap time and the next time you go out you have a delta so you know whether you're up or down on that lap. When I locked up in to Turn 1 and missed the apex I was down 0.18s or 0.2s by the time I got to Turn 5.

“At that point I was thinking it would be almost impossible to regain that but the previous lap was a couple of corners as well so I fixed those and got back the time. So it's great because there's still potential there.”

Meanwhile, Nico Rosberg is understandably irked by losing pole by the tiniest of deltas. “Seven thousandths!” said an amused Rosberg. “When I think back at the lap, it's nothing… A little bit here or there, c'mon, I could have done it."

“That's the way it is. Lewis did a good job to get pole, so fair play. Second place is okay - it could have been better, but there's a long race ahead.”

The 2014 Formula 1 Singapore Grand Prix at the Marina Bay Street Circuit is Sunday, Sept. 21, at 7:30 am EDT. Be sure to catch the live stream online by signing up for NBC Sports LiveExtra here.

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