Sebastian Vettel says he is "surpriseওd" to have taken pole position for the Singapore Grand Prix by such a big margin.

Vettel looked dominant throughout qualifying, building on the fantastic pace show🌳n in final practice, to blitz his rivals.

In the end both his runs in top-ten shootout would ꦕhave been good enough to give him his first pole with Ferrari - 🥃and Ferraris first for 61 races - but still he did improve on his final lap.

Indeed he was the only man to break the 1m 44s bracket, postꦚing a 1m 𝔍43.885s lap, to leave him 0.543s up on former Red Bull team-mate Daniel Ricciardo.

"A proper one I would say. Unbelievable, I know it is only Saturday and obviously the main job is coming tomorrow but I had to enjoy the moment when I heard that we had made it. It was looking pretty good right from the of🐈f-se🙈t of qualifying and actually from this morning [FP3] to be fair. And then it was just... the car was fantastic to drive - it just got better through qualifying," Vettel said.

"We got the maximum today. I am surprised by the margin but I just think it came together. I really had a near perfect lap at ꦆthe end. I was very happy with the laps I had today, espe🅘cially the last one.

"Around 🌃here it is such a long tricky lap and so easy to just go in a little bit too deep or in too far and push it a little bit too much. It just seemed to come in the end and I was very happy that I made it to the finish line because it felt like a good lap and it was a good lap in the end.

"Very happy."

Meanwhile, Vettel added that he thought Mercedes were "sandbagging" in practice when t🐻hey were off the pace, although as it turned out fifth and sixth was a good as they could do.

"I don't know [why they are not as strong as usual]🅺, it's a surprise. I thought they were sandbagging yesterday and also this morning because there is no doubt they have the s🐻trongest package," he continued.

"They have a very good car, a very good power unit, which we know, and usually that puts t🍸hem up there very high and makes them difficult to beat. I don't know, they must have some issues and not feeling comfortable at all with their degradation, I think. I would🌄n't rule them out for tomorrow. It's not the easiest circuit to overtake, but if you have the pace you can close in."