Top drivers such as Sebastian Vettel, Mark Webber and Jenson Button have come out in defense of those drivers who chose not to run in Singapore’s qualifying 3 session on Saturday.
Michael Schumacher, Adrian Sutil and Paul di Resta qualified 8th, 9th and 10th respectively in the qualifying session for the Singapore grand-prix, however none of them set a time in Q3 all choosing to save a set of tyres for Sunday’s race session.
Following the qualifying session, may experts and pundits were un-happy that the drivers hadn’t run and some, including BBC’s Martin Brundle, suggested that all drivers in Q3 should be forced to run or face a penalty.
However, Red Bull Racing drivers, Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber have defended the decision of Mercedes and Force India with Vettel saying, “I think that generally if we had more tyres across the weekend, we would run more.”
Australian Webber echoed his team-mate’s sentiments and elaborated suggesting, “I think the question is completely fair but I think the suggestion of a penalty is not – it’s not fair to penalise people who are looking to try to have a good performance on Sunday.”
Jenson Button, who qualified third, just behind the Red Bull’s, said that the drivers who chose to sit-out didn’t do anything wrong, and insisted, “You can’t penalise people for not running unless there’s a regulation change.
“It’s the way the regulations are and we’re going to try everything we can to do the best we can on a Sunday.”
Sebastian Vettel has a mathematical chance of winning the drivers championship this weekend – make sure you join our LIVE text service from 12.30pm (BST) for live updates from Singapore.
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