Under three minutes. That was all that was left on the Sprint Qualifying clock when Max Verstappen finally swept out of the pit lane on Friday night, and by then his rivals for pole had all shown their hands. The McLarens had gone. So had the Mercedes. Charles Leclerc was already out there, and Lewis Hamilton was committed to his only run. Verstappen had a set of soft tyres he had not driven on all weekend and one lap to get it right under the Marina Bay lights.

He got it right. A 1:31.156, just over a tenth clear of George Russell, and pole for Singapore’s first ever Sprint.

It was a night for patience. Formula 1 had come back under the lights with a single hour of practice behind it and a circuit still coated in dust, a surface that got quicker with every car that crossed it. Everybody knew it. The question, for more than an hour, was who could hold their nerve long enough to use it.

The nerves showed early. Sergio Pérez clipped the wall in the first part of qualifying, and as he tried to nurse his wounded Cadillac home, pieces of it came away on the track. Yellow flags, then red. Verstappen was caught up in the yellows that followed, and it would put him under investigation after the session, a loose thread that could have unravelled everything. It didn’t. When the session resumed, the whole field queued at the end of the pit lane with engines running, desperate to go again.

Hamilton had led before the stoppage. Verstappen led after it, from Russell and Hamilton, while Nico Hülkenberg hauled his Audi up to eighth, ahead of Antonelli’s Mercedes.

Further down, a rookie was learning what Marina Bay asks of you. Arvid Lindblad was the only driver on the grid who had never raced here, and he had one hour of practice to learn nineteen corners of concrete before it counted. He went out in the first round, seventeenth. There is no shame in that. This is a track that rewards a confidence you can only earn with laps, and he had barely been given any.

The second round belonged, for a while, to Ferrari, who led it one-two on the medium tyres the rules demanded. The more telling story was in the Mercedes garage. Russell, in the car his team had wound back to its older specification, kept finding time, even after a lock-up forced him back out on used tyres. Across the garage, Kimi Antonelli had the new upgrade, and by the end of the night he was more than half a second slower. “Already [in] FP1 I was struggling,” he admitted, with “still a lot to understand about this package.” Franco Colapinto missed the cut for the final round by less than a tenth.

Then the softs went on, and the waiting began. Eight minutes and one set of tyres: enough for two flying laps if you went early, with a cool-down lap in between, or just one if you waited. Go too early and the track gets quicker behind you. Go too late and you have bet everything on a single attempt with no way back. McLaren and Mercedes went first. Leclerc followed with seven minutes left, carrying enough fuel for two runs. Hamilton waited until just under five. In the Red Bull garage, nobody moved.

Hamilton’s gamble nearly worked. He had looked quick all evening, and into the final sector he was on it, until the rear of the Ferrari started to slide away from him. In the F1 TV commentary box, Jolyon Palmer watched it happen: a car “absolutely hunting for the rear grip,” the wheel corrected again and again, “and the lap time just fell away.” Hamilton came home sixth, and he did not reach for an excuse.

Leclerc’s caution paid him back. His second attempt found nearly two tenths and third place, even if Fred Vasseur conceded afterwards that Ferrari had simply been better on the mediums than the softs. Leclerc chose to see the glass half full. “On a track like this,” he said, “P3 is a good position to start the Sprint from, as overtaking will be difficult for all.”

The McLarens slotted in behind him, Oscar Piastri fourth and Lando Norris fifth, and listening to them afterwards you would have thought they had driven different cars. Piastri was content: “Not a bad effort.” Norris, the reigning world champion, was nowhere near as kind to himself. “It’s just simply that I didn’t do a good enough job.”

And then there was Russell. He won this race from pole a year ago, and on Friday night he did the next best thing in a car his own team had downgraded, second, a tenth behind, while the shiny new upgrade sat seventh on Antonelli’s Mercedes. It has been a cruel season. His engine let go while he was running third at Sepang last weekend, his third retirement of the year, and the replacement brings a grid penalty that Mercedes expect to send him to the back on Sunday. This time he got to enjoy himself, and he could not resist the line of the night.

Which brings it back to the man who waited. Red Bull had not put either car on the soft tyre in practice, and among the other front-running teams only Antonelli had skipped it too, so the run that took pole was the first time all weekend Verstappen had felt it underneath him. A new car, unfamiliar grip, a circuit that forgives nothing, and no second chance if it went wrong. He built the lap in the first sector, gave some of it back through the middle, where Russell closed to within 0.082 seconds, and found it again in the last. “Once we bolted on the soft tyres, it felt like the car was coming alive a little bit more,” he said. “But I did not expect this.”

It is easy to forget, with everything he has won, that Singapore has never given him what he came for. He has stood on the podium here, but year after year he has left Marina Bay without a win, and until Friday night without a single pole of any kind. He began this week with a cake in the garage for his 250th Grand Prix. He ended Friday at the front of the grid, at the one place that has always made him wait.

Patience has never been the first word anyone reaches for with Max Verstappen. Under the lights on Friday, it was the only one that mattered. On Saturday he starts the Sprint from pole. On Sunday, perhaps, the city that has kept him waiting for so long finally lets him win.