Hello. This Singapore Grand Prix began with the FIA taking centre stage after human error affected Sprint Qualifying. On track, however, it was an untouchable weekend for Max Verstappen. Three wins in eight days reminded us just how good he is and proved that Red Bull have turned their season around.
Kimi Antonelli produced another mature recovery drive to secure a podium and now stands on the brink of becoming the youngest-ever World Champion. Strategy calls and incidents cause headaches for Ferrari and McLaren, while the return of McLaren’s “papaya rules” put the team’s back under scrutiny.
General News
The FIA has admitted “human error” caused a power disparity during Sprint Qualifying in Singapore. A red flag for debris in SQ1 caused by Sergio Perez; the FIA did not activate Overtake Mode – an extra power boost that is normally active throughout qualifying and used in races to aid overtaking.
The FIA reactivated Overtake Mode for 27 seconds before deactivating it again, thus causing an unfair advantage in the first part of Sprint Qualifying. It appears that the OM was turned on for several drivers on their final attempts before being turned on. Sky Sports understands Williams petitioned for all teams to progress to SQ2, which was declined, and no protests are expected.
There was also a timing issue during Sprint Qualifying, which the FIA says was “unrelated” to the “human error”.
An FIA statement read, “This issue in question meant Overtake Mode was not available after the red flag period during SQ1. When it became apparent that Overtake Mode was not active after the restart, it was then activated for a period of 27 seconds before being deactivated again.”
“The FIA acknowledges that this unfortunate human error had an impact on the performance of certain cars based on the timing of their run and their position around the lap. The second and third periods of Sprint Qualifying were not affected.” But the image isn’t good for the sport.
Single-seater director Nikolas Tombazis described it as “the worst thing” for the federation. He told Sky Sports “there’s a lot of things happening in race control simultaneously” and explained how the mistake happened.
He went on to add, “Normally it is a manual process to re-enable it, because clearly when it gets re-enabled we want to make sure from a safety point of view it’s okay to do so. There was a pop-up window that came on somebody’s computer that was not acted on quickly enough or when it should have. And then under the time pressure and the general other pressure, this was forgotten, unfortunately.”
Tombazis accepted that it was a mess as it impacted the competitive order, as well as fairness and safety.
Weekend recap
Practice saw George Russell set a 32.274, going just under two-tenths faster than Charles Leclerc. Leclerc was three-quarters of a tenth ahead of Lando Norris, who managed to split the Ferraris as he went two tenths faster than Lewis Hamilton, while Norris’s McLaren teammate Oscar Piastri was six and a half hundredths behind.
In sprint qualifying, Max Verstappen beat Russell by just under a tenth and a quarter to secure sprint pole. The Dutchman improved by a second and a half from his best time in SQ2, setting a 31.156 to secure his first pole of the season. Russell put his Mercedes six hundredths faster than Leclerc, with the Ferrari driver almost half a tenth ahead of the McLaren’s.
Sprint Verstappen took a two-and-a-half-second victory in an action-packed rain-delayed race. The Red Bull driver finished ahead of the two Ferraris, with Lewis Hamilton finishing fourteen seconds ahead of teammate Charles Leclerc. Antonelli finished fourth, three and a half tenths behind the Ferrari duo, in a race which proved drama-filled from the very start.
GP qualifying, Verstappen took his second pole of the weekend as he beat Leclerc by just over half a tenth. The Dutchman left it late and failed to improve in the final moments of Q3 as the track appeared to fall away as the temperatures cooled down during qualifying. Hamilton had provisional pole, but when on his final attempt he couldn’t find a further improvement and was then beaten by Verstappen and then Leclerc.
Verstappen continued his domination of competitive sessions as he took victory, finishing seven seconds ahead of Antonelli, who is now on the brink of becoming the youngest ever champion at the next race in Austin. Verstappen fended off the Ferrari duo of Leclerc and Hamilton at the start
Hamilton looked like the stronger of the Ferraris, but the team’s decision to go long and try to one-stop the race may have been the right call. But the seven-time champion overruled the team and switched to a two-stop, resulting in him losing position to Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri. Eventually finishing sixth
McLaren
McLaren headed into this weekend off the back of two difficult weekends, though Sepang wasn’t as difficult as Baku it feels like Sepang was a missed opportunity, though Oscar Piastri finished sixth and Norris ninth.
On a day when there were many strategy calls to be made, the team got the big one wrong when they opted to put both drivers on medium tyres for the start, a decision that seemed logical at the time but which was soon proved to be incorrect. Sepang is always a tricky race where strategy, weather and performance can change very quicky.
Team principal Andrea Stella said, “At the pit wall, in terms of making calls and strategy on tyres, the most difficult moment was certainly at the start. Where it wasn’t clear [was] whether the track was requiring intermediate tyres, or it would work for the dry tyres.”
“On this kind of tarmac already what we saw on the laps to the grid is that the intermediate tyres were getting damaged very rapidly, and also on this kind of tarmac, the dry tyres work very, very easily – much more easily than pretty much every other circuit.”
Adding that at that stage it appeared dry enough to stay on track and they believed the dry tyres would have switched on quicker than they thought. But that then resulted in a stop where they switched to inters after tumbling down the order, at that key moment in the race.
McLaren were one of several teams where one driver pitted, and the other stuck with the slicks. However, that wasn’t a big picture choice. Stella said, “No, it wasn’t as simple as splitting. It was more the uncertainty as to how much it would take for the dry tyres to start to work, and as a matter of fact, it took longer than what we thought it would take.”
“So ultimately, it was an incorrect judgment as to the crossover at which the dry tyres would be faster than the intermediate tyres. But there was not a logic as simple as saying, ‘Let’s split, and let’s see what which one is right.’ We thought that the dry tyres would switch on faster.”
Piastri and Norris had made it up to P7 and P8. George Russell’s late retirement handed the Australian a place, but Norris was wrong-footed when the Safety Car queue backed up, and he dropped to P11. After the restart, he managed to gain a couple of places.
Following the issue in Sepang, Piastri qualified fourth, a tenth ahead of Norris for the sprint. After the session, the world champion was hopeful the issue at recent races had been resolved. Norris believes that his side of the McLaren garage is ‘closer as a team’, and his qualifying performance was down to him not putting together a good lap.
He said, “I think so, from what I’ve seen so far. I don’t know everything just yet, to be honest. The guys are still looking into it, and it’s been a busy day, but a lot of things seem good. We seem closer as a team; I just didn’t do a good enough job. I just don’t think I put together a very good lap; that was all. No excuse.”
Well, Norris and Piastri’s crash in the sprint denied the team a double points score with the Australian retiring after being hit by the Englishman. Though the stewards handed out no penalty, there were some harsh words from Team Principal Andrea Stella at the end of the day.
The Italian reminded his drivers that ‘there’s no ego’ and ‘no person bigger than the interest of McLaren’. He told Sky Sports, “It’s been a long day. The sprint race was a race that gave us some good points at a moment when we were not in a position to win. We were in a position to score good points. And we saw two McLarens having contact.”
“Basically, going out of the race. Lando could score one point, but definitely that’s not enough and, seeing two McLarens making contact like that is simply not acceptable. This is something that we will discuss with our drivers. We will do it in private. We will reiterate that the team’s interest is far bigger than any of us.”
Norris later revealed he was “told off” by McLaren following a collision, but insisted in his post-session interview that he thought the move was on.
In GP qualifying, Norris qualifying in fifth and Oscar Piastri in seventh, although he will start from sixth due to grid penalties. After the session Norris said he believed that’s where he thought the team should be as there was no reason to be on the pace after not making changes between sessions.
He said, “I think in the end we’re kind of where we should be. We’ve not done anything, nothing has changed [since the Sprint], so there’s no reason why we’re suddenly going to be on the pace.”
“I could obviously put bits together, like I could have a very good sector 1 or very good sector 2. But the car is just too much of a challenge, hence we’re P5 and P7. It’s just too difficult, I feel like I’m almost crashing to put in a purple sector but you just can’t do that, the tyres don’t survive.”
Piastri was only able to finish seventh in Qualifying after McLaren repaired his damaged car from the earlier collision with Norris, with the stewards taking no further action over the incident. He added, “I think we, to be honest, looked relatively convincingly the third or fourth quickest [car]. I think Max had us covered and I think the Ferraris did too, to be honest.”
“Bit of a shame, I was hoping we had a bit more but I think that was pretty much all we had. It wasn’t the smoothest of sessions, a few mistakes here and there, not that easy to get time out of the car. We’ll try again tomorrow.”
Mercedes
George Russell started the Grand Prix from the back of the grid, adding another blow to his championship hopes. Russell had a new power unit of the old specification on Friday in Singapore, which exceeded the season allocation of four, therefore incurring a penalty that will drop him to the rear of the grid. Russell was expected to have a new power unit at the next race in Austin later this month, which would include an upgrade.
Team principal Toto Wolff said, confirming the news: “That is particularly frustrating given the way [Russell] drove last weekend and the result he deserved to be fighting for. Unfortunately, these things are part of the sport, and our focus now is on giving him the best possible car and opportunities to fight back through the field.”
Austin would have been the better place for the power unit change, which will also include a power unit upgrade, because the circuit should favour the teams’ straight-line speed advantage and overtaking is easier.
Russell ran the older, previous-specification aerodynamic package. Images from the pitlane show the two distinct vehicle floors actively being prepared with the different aerodynamic packages side by side. The penalty will only apply to Sunday’s Grand Prix, and not Saturday’s sprint.
Mercedes and Singapore are something of an enigma, as they’ve always seemed to struggle at Marina Bay, and despite the upgrade for Kimi Antonelli, he could only manage seventh for the sprint, six and a half tenths off Verstappen. The Italian appears to have struggled to fine tune the newer spec car.
Yet everything is not going smoothly for Antonelli, who took seventh for Saturday’s sprint race, 0.573s behind second-placed Russell and 0.693s off polesitter Verstappen.
Antonelli told F1 TV, “Already in FP1 I was struggling,”. “Still a lot to understand about this package. It’s really the car is very difficult, very unpredictable and very difficult to put a lap together. So yeah, it’s a shame because I was coming with high hopes, but so far, it’s been very difficult.”
One of the feelings I get from the press and watching the car over the last week, as Toto Wolff put it himself, “the new car seems to be a little trickier to drive”. That’s the danger always with upgrades they can move you forwards or back,
So Antonelli is not particularly confident for the rest of the Marina Bay weekend, with Verstappen looking the dominant driver and McLaren and Ferrari also in the mix. Adding “It’s going to be a difficult weekend, unless we can pull something out tomorrow. But other than that, it’s going to be very tricky. I don’t really see where we can find seven tenths, but you never know.
Russell believes crashing out of the sprint race may have hindered his performance in qualifying. At the start, he surged into the lead on a wet track with a much better getaway than Max Verstappen, but lost control as he ran ever so slightly wide on the exit of the last corner. The Briton spun into the inside wall and retired.
He then went onto qualify sixth half a second behind Verstappen for the Grand Prix, explaining the car didn’t feel the same. Russell explained after qualifying, “The car didn’t feel quite the same. I was struggling with the rear end and then I was overheating the tyres and it was just a bit of a downward spiral, whereas yesterday it all just clicked and it was all working well, so we need to see why that was.
“[This] is not, sometimes, a surprise when the whole team is putting it back together so quickly and it’s obviously been in the wall. Yesterday we were competitive every lap we did, and today it was not the case.”
Antonelli reacted surprised after being informed that his drive from ninth to third gives him a chance of clinching the title in a fortnight in Austin. It was one of those great drives we have seen from him this year which has moved him into this position, hopefully, as we still face uncertainty about Qatar and Abu Dhabi.
With six rounds scheduled remaining, and 150 points still up for grabs, Antonelli can put the title beyond doubt if he leaves the next round at if he is 125 points or more ahead of his nearest rival.
Told about the title picture, Antonelli said: “Can I? Really? Let’s not worry about that! Let’s try to do the best weekends possible and finish the job.”
Antonelli did the job by climbing from fourth to third in Sunday’s race – taking advantage when Lewis Hamilton and Lando Norris got involved in a scrap in the closing stages.
Reflecting on the race and weekend as a whole, Antonelli added: “It was not easy out there. I felt very good on the soft [tyre], but on the medium I struggled a lot. Then on the soft the pace was very good at the end; it was very, very good, so that’s a positive.”
“However, there’s still lots of work to do. The team did a great job on trying to turn [things] around, especially the car. I think we can be very happy and proud of the job we did, especially looking at how we started the weekend.” Thinking about the race that was one of these championship-winning recovery drives as we saw at Monza, and he hasn’t cracked under pressure.
He just needs to not let the pressure of the title get to him, as when mistakes are made, Antonelli could be one of the greatest drivers, given he could have another two decades in this sport.
Russell, his nearest rival, recovered from nineteenth to finish ninth; I think that’s decent given where he started. But in terms of the season, it has been a difficult weekend through no fault of his own, and once he got into the top ten it was always going to be difficult.
He said, “I think we made good progress in the first stint, to be honest. I was pretty pleased with the progress there. However, the second stint with that VSC… could have stayed out a little bit longer.”
“Then Nico did a great job defending – I struggled to get by him. And then towards the end of the race, it wasn’t worth the risk so I just brought the car home. Not a fantastic weekend, so a bit of a shame.”
Red Bull
While Max Verstappen took sprint pole, Friday appeared difficult for teammate Isack Hadjar, who qualified ninth, and unable to explain his lack of performance. Hadjar complained that his RB22 was bottoming out too much in the only practice session, where he was fourth-fastest ahead of Max Verstappen, but seven tenths down on the Dutchman when they switched to the medium compound.
That gap continued in SQ1 and grew to nearly nine tenths in SQ3 before the time was deleted for track limits. This is very confusing as we know street circuits tend to get faster through the weekend and could be down to tyre compounds and conditions, as Hadjar was comfortable on the hard tyre in practice.
Asked if he immediately felt like he didn’t have pace on soft tyres, Hadjar replied: “No, I don’t know. The soft definitely feels like a huge step to the medium compound. It was a lot more grip, but it didn’t really matter anyway, all the other guys are on the soft as well, so…”
Saturday was a nightmare for Isack Hadjar, plagued with reliability issues in the sprint forcing him to retire. Then, despite the team fixing that issue, he ground to a halt before setting a time in Q1, because of the gearbox failure. Asked by Sky Sports if knowing the issue wasn’t his fault made the result easier to stomach, he replied “No, I want to drive. Honestly, I don’t care about P22. I just want to get out there and do my thing. Get to it.”
“I have plenty of soft tyres in the garage right now that are not going to be used. And that’s what pisses me off the most right now. I just want to be there and fight with the other guys.”
This isn’t his fault and is something we have seen a lot more of this year and Marina Bay is a difficult race even with safety cars to overtake. Hadjar could have been up there and through; no fault of his own. The second half has been difficult. But when he hasn’t been injured or had these reliability issues, he has been up there.
Verstappen went on to convert pole into a first win in Singapore, with a seven-second win ahead of Leclerc. He has been the class of the field on the Malay peninsula, winning three races in eight days, which was also his 250th race start.
Speaking after the triumph, Verstappen smiled: “It’s taken a while, but I think this race was very good. We had pace when we needed to have it on the soft tyre and on the medium, even though I think the medium tyre for everyone was a bit more of a struggle.”
Ferrari
Charles Leclerc has called on Ferrari to learn from Red Bull following the team unsuccessful tyre gamble last weekend at Sepang. Leclerc and teammate Lewis Hamilton started on soft tyres, as opposed to the intermediates used by Red Bull’s Max Verstappen and Isack Hadjar.
But it quickly backfired as Leclerc and Hamilton respectively dropped from fourth and second to last and fifteenth, with the Monegasque pitting at the end of a damp lap one. Ferrari strategy errors has been a long-running topic, and when they get it wrong, they get it spectacularly wrong.
Leclerc told Motorsport.com, “I was aligned with the team. It was a close call as it is always in these conditions and we’ll speak whether to split the cars in those conditions is the best possible way.”
“But it’s also true that when you split the cars, by definition there’s one very wrong choice and one very good choice and it’s very difficult to have an in-between scenario where both scenarios kind of pans out the same. So we thought we were doing the right thing obviously, but clearly there’s one team in particular – and that is Red Bull – that gets it right most of the time with both cars.
Ferrari was one of six teams to start on dry tyres but didn’t split the choice, but by lap thirteen, the track became dry enough for dry tyres, thus meaning they needed to stop earlier to change tyres.
Leclerc added, “The thing is that the biggest question mark we’ve had is how much water there is in the holes of the tarmac, and there was a lot more water than I think the majority thought there was, and that’s why the slick ended up being the wrong decision.”
Hamilton and Leclerc still eventually recovered to third and fourth, though that was helped by George Russell retiring with five laps left due to a power unit failure on his Mercedes.
After qualifying sixth for the sprint, Hamilton conceded he made the ‘wrong choice’ when deciding on the SQ3 run plan. Ferrari had topped SQ2 but when it came to the soft running in the final part of sprint qualifying he was three tenths off.
Leclerc and Hamilton took to the track in the middle of the eight-minute session – first the Monegasque, who had time for a second attempt after a cool-down lap, then the Briton, whose sole attempt was only good enough for sixth. He was 0.546s adrift of Max Verstappen’s benchmark.
Hamilton said, “It was looking good in Q1 and Q2, and then… I don’t really know where it went away. We did a slightly different run plan to the others. It was my choice, and I think we got that wrong. But ultimately, the car was very oversteering on that lap. I don’t know if the rears were not ready or if they were overheating, it was difficult to say, but it was very, very snappy, oversteery, and it just wasn’t a good lap overall.”
Leclerc ended SQ3 in third, three tenths quicker than the seven-time world champion. He added, “Honestly, it shouldn’t be an excuse. I think the raw pace, since three or four races, we’ve lost a little bit of our raw performance. We’re just not fast enough to fight with them just yet.”
“But still, I feel like there’s potential in the car. For tomorrow, maybe with some fine-tuning, we can be there or thereabouts for fighting for pole. It’s not too bad, but we are missing a little bit.”
Though GP qualifying went better for Hamilton with him qualifying third just over a tenth behind Verstappen, he felt when it got to the final runs his changes tipped him too far over the edge. He had been fastest in Q3 up until that point after topping Q1 and Q2, but couldn’t repeat it on his Q3 runs.
Both his Q3 runs were around a tenth and a quarter off Verstappen and Leclerc’s late improvement saw him go seven hundredths faster than Hamilton. He said in the pen “We made some changes going into qualifying. The car was feeling so much better, and I really felt like she had more in her. So we were just pushing her more and more through the laps and through the sessions”
“Q1 and Q2 were awesome. We got to Q3, and snaps in Turns 1 and 3 put me two tenths down. The rest of the lap was good, and then the last lap, just again struggled with snapping. So I think there’s a real fine line with our car where it’s over the edge or under the limit, and finding that sweet spot is very, very difficult.”
“I think I probably had it in the first two [parts of qualifying]. But you have to look for the progress of the track, the grip coming up, and so you have to kind of react to that. In hindsight, maybe I shouldn’t have. So it wasn’t great enough for myself.”
Ferrari and Strategy: two old rivals… but this time it was a driver’s call, which cost Hamilton, who was at the time running third and opted not to do an extra stop under the VSC. Ferrari told Hamilton to follow Leclerc into the pits, but he ignored the call and stayed out, finishing sixth after being overtaken by Mercedes’ Kimi Antonelli and McLaren’s Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri in the closing stages.
Hamilton was excused from fulfilling his media duties after the race as he felt unwell after competing in the sweltering conditions, but he released a statement.
It read, “Today wasn’t the result we were looking for, and it was on me. At a track that’s difficult to overtake, you need to try something different, and I chose to start on a new medium tyre to go long and try to make a one-stop work. Unfortunately, the Medium didn’t perform as well as the soft.”
Leclerc began on the soft tyre and Hamilton the medium, with the former turning out to be better performing. When Hamilton switched to the soft at the first round of pit stops, he found himself behind Leclerc, now on the medium tyre, with more pace.
Racing Bulls
Racing Bulls had a mixed Friday Arvid Lindblad knocked out after he struggled to find his rhythm at a new track after just the one practice session, and his case was not helped by disruption in SQ1 that limited his running. But Lawson put in a strong performance to start in the top eight.
Lindblad said, “It’s a tough situation coming in as a rookie with only one Free Practice session at a street circuit, especially with the very different conditions under the lights compared to this afternoon. I wanted to complete a few laps in SQ1 to build up confidence, but the yellow flag meant we weren’t able to do that.”
I think that is his worst qualifying of the season, but its not unexpected that he never been here before, like when he was in Miami when he was knocked out in Q1. But the rest of this weekend is a huge test, as he needs to remain in control as on this circuit you need rhythm and speed. Without FP2 and FP3, he wouldn’t have got the experience around these streets.
Team principal Alan Permane says the team will decide its line-up between three drivers “in the coming weeks.” Racing Bulls and Haas are the only teams yet to decide on their 2027 drivers, but both Liam Lawson and Lindblad have delivered solid results, allowing the team to be leading the midfield in the Constructors’,
However, Red Bull junior Nikola Tsolov is waiting in the wings for a chance to race in Formula 1, having impressed by competing for the Formula 2 title in his first full season. The Bulgarian is seven points off leader Rafael Camara going into the scheduled final two rounds in Qatar and Abu Dhabi, which are now expected to go ahead, with a decision expected next week.
Asked ahead of the Singapore Grand Prix when a decision will be made, Permane said: “I don’t want to give you a definite date. You know, no, that’s not going to work. It’s going to be in the coming weeks, let’s say.
“I mean, we’re in no rush. I think everyone knows we’ve got two fantastic drivers. We’ve got a fantastic driver in F2 at the moment, and they’re all there and ready to go. But three doesn’t fit into two, of course, and we’re just going to take a little bit more time and make sure we get the right pairing for next year.”
Racing Bulls face a fundamental decision which I think plays into what they are; a few years ago they were changed to a B-team, but are they still there needed to bring that talent through?
Results Summary
Sprint Pole Position |
Max Verstappen
Red Bull – Ford RBPT 01:31.756 |
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Sprint Winner |
Max Verstappen
Red Bull – Ford RBPT 39:48.162 |
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Race Pole Position |
Max Verstappen
Red Bull – Ford RBPT 01:31.379 |
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Grand Prix Podium |
||||||
Po |
Name |
Nat |
Team |
Time |
Points |
|
| 1 | Max Verstappen | NED | Red Bull – Ford RBPT | 01:42:00.785 | 25 | |
| 2 | Charles Leclerc | MON | Ferrari | +00:07.355 | 18 | |
| 3 | Andrea ‘Kimi’ Antonelli | ITA | Mercedes | +00:24.573 | 15 | |
| Fastest
Lap |
Charles Leclerc | MON | Ferrari | 01:35.202 | ||
Championship Standings
Drivers’ Championship |
Constructors Championship |
|||
Po |
Name |
Points |
Constructor |
Points |
| 1 | Andrea ‘Kimi’ Antonelli | 340 | Mercedes | 578 |
| 2 | George Russell | 238 | Ferrari | 444 |
| 3 | Lewis Hamilton | 229 | McLaren – Mercedes | 339 |
| 4 | Max Verstappen | 221 | Red Bull – Ford RBPT | 332 |
| 5 | Charles Leclerc | 215 | Racing Bulls – Ford RBPT | 100 |
