In 2008, when the inaugural Singapore Grand Prix was held at the Marina Bay Circuit, Felipe Massa was the event’s first pole-position winner in his Ferrari.

He appeared set to claim his second pole at the track yesterday as, with just 60 seconds left in the session, the Brazilian, who is now a Williams driver, was on top of the time sheets with a lap of one minute, 46.007 seconds.

Unfortunately for Massa, the final top-10 shoot-out lasts 12 minutes, not 11, and the extra minute proved detrimental to his victory hopes.

He could only improve his time by seven thousandths of a second and he was then beaten by five drivers as he slipped to sixth on the grid for today’s race.

The pole exchanged hands four times in the final stages of the session. Daniel Ricciardo’s Red Bull Racing car was the first to beat Massa’s time, but moments later championship leader Nico Rosberg beat his time in his Mercedes-GP car.

Then Rosberg’s teammate Lewis Hamilton trimmed seven thousandths off Rosberg’s time with a 1.45.681 effort to claim his sixth pole of the season in what was the most competitive session this year.

Half-a-second covered the top eight on the grid and the Red Bulls, Williams and Ferrari cars were all competitive enough to push Mercedes hard.

Hamilton acknowledged that he had not expected he and Rosberg would be pushed so hard, with qualifying in 2014 having mostly been a private duel between the Mercedes teammates, with yesterday being their 13th pole from 14 races this season.

“The others have taken a step, it is a real, real surprise,” said the 2008 world champion.

“I’m just as surprised to see Ferrari competing on a lap, which is great to see, also Williams and Red Bull.

“For racing it is great. That is the most exciting qualifying session I have had for a long time. You have to be spot on and I was almost there.”

Hamilton said he could have gone quicker but for an error early on the lap that earned him the top spot.

“I just didn’t really have a clean lap through the whole of qualifying,” he said. “The last one was the cleanest.

“I locked up at the apex of Turn 1. I was down two 10ths by the time I got to Turn 5, I thought it would be impossible to regain it, but, the previous lap there were a couple of corners where I lost out, so I sorted them out.”

Massa, 33, has taken the one pole not claimed by a Mercedes driver in 2014, in Austria in June, but on that occasion both Mercedes drivers made costly mistakes, which lost them time, and they did not give a proper demonstration of their speed as Rosberg was third quickest and Hamilton was ninth.

They went on to dominate that race and the interesting element today is whether the Red Bulls of Ricciardo and Sebastian Vettel, the Ferraris of Fernando Alonso and Kimi Raikkonen and the Williams cars of Massa and Valtteri Bottas can stick with the Mercedes cars for 61 laps and not just one.

The three occasions that a Mercedes has not won a race this season (Canada, Hungary and Belgium) were because of a lack of reliability with their cars, wet weather or their drivers colliding with each other.

No one has beaten the Mercedes on pure pace over a race distance but if the chasing pack can maintain their qualifying form today they will be in position to really push the German team hard.

Ricciardo, who has an outside hope of the championship – he goes into today’s event 72 points adrift of Rosberg with six races remaining – said he was encouraged by being only 0.173 seconds slower than Hamilton.

It is definitely encouraging,” said the Australian. “Coming into the weekend I thought if we could get within two or three 10ths it should give us some optimism to stay close to them in the race. We are closer than we thought.”

Hamilton is 22 points behind Rosberg, but can close that by at least seven points if he triumphs today.

He has won from pole before, in 2009, and, if he can reach Turn 1 first today, he will be confident of repeating that result and boosting his title hopes.

However, for the first time – on pure performance – it looks as if he will have more to worry about than just his teammate.