SINGAPORE -- It was a dark and stormy night at the Marina Bay street circuit, the kind that makes grizzled Formula One veterans shudder in their firesuits. As the sleek, high-powered beasts of the Red Bull Racing Team took to the track, they carried with them the heavy, unbroken mantle of absolute season dominance. Little did they know, they were stepping into a classic 'Sainz storm'. Known to many as the 'sorcerer of Singapore', Ferrari's Carlos Sainz was in rare form, conjuring up a pole position time of a whopping 1min 30.984sec. With the entire track holding its breath, you could have heard a single Ferrari gear drop. There was a certain electrifying dread in the air as Sainz laid down a lap the likes of which Red Bull's bull-headed toreros, Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez, could only dream of. The duo, usually unstoppable racing conquerors, was left staring at their rear-view mirrors on Saturday. What they saw haunts their worst nightmares. You don’t need to be a psychic to see that any dreams of an unbeaten season were quickly changing into shutter-speed mirages of 'what could have been'. Having won all the previous 14 races this season, this was the equivalent of a matador being thrown into a china shop with a stampede of rampaging bulls at his heels. The look in their eyes on the pit wall, that unbearable realization that victory may be beyond them this time, was as palatable as a three-day-old energy drink. "Remember when we were the kings," said a seemingly melancholic Verstappen, his voice barely audible over the deafening roar of the Ferrari engines. "Those were good times." Perez, too, reflected. "It's not the 100-percent winning record that's in danger. It's our ego. But we’re tough. We've been dealt a poor hand, and we've worked with draw fours and reverses before." While the world of Formula One shared the Red Bull team's collective 'where did we go wrong?' moment, Carlos Sainz was all smiles, cruising in the technicolour sunset of Singapore, whispering promises of a time when the Ferrari reign returns, powered by scarlet dreams. Welcome to the Singapore Grand Prix, where, as it turns out, Red Bull doesn't always give you wings.