A rain delayed sprint, a costly crash from the title favorite, and a first for Max Verstappen in Singapore. By the time the Formula 1 weekend was over, Red Bull looked like it might have the fastest car on the grid, and George Russell’s championship hopes had taken another hit.
Singapore sprint: Rain, risk, and Russell’s error
In Malaysia, which was still technically the Bahrain Grand Prix, a downpour before the race disrupted things mightily. On Saturday morning in Singapore, shortly before the sprint was due to start, it seemed history was about to rhyme when the skies opened. Standing water appeared in places on the track, and the sprint was delayed by 30 minutes.
The sprint format, in which a short extra race replaces a practice session a day before the main event, is unloved by drivers and teams. Winning Saturday’s sprint carries little prestige. With qualifying just a few hours later, risk taking is discouraged for fear that a crash could ruin Sunday’s race a day early.
In Singapore, as at most street circuits, the barriers that line the track are close and unyielding. Getting it even slightly wrong carries real, punishing consequences.
That is what happened to George Russell. The Mercedes driver entered this season as the title favorite, only to see those hopes evaporate because of a combination of car unreliability and a young teammate, Kimi Antonelli, who appears to be a generational talent. A win in Azerbaijan in September was a chance for Russell to get back on terms with Antonelli, but he failed to finish in Malaysia, and his sprint did not last much longer.
It began well. The track was still far too wet for slick tires, so the entire field lined up on intermediate treaded tires. Russell’s Mercedes made a much better start from second on the grid than polesitter Max Verstappen’s Red Bull, and he stole the lead. A lap later, Russell’s sprint was over, his car bent and broken after he misjudged the final corner. On a wet track, painted sections become very slippery, and that goes double for street circuits.
“I went a little bit wide, and then I touched the white line. The No. 1 rule in the rain is don’t touch the white line. It’s a very silly mistake, overly confident. I think it’s my first crash of the year. It’s annoying to happen from that position,” Russell said after the fact.
Verstappen takes the sprint and the spotlight
Verstappen benefited from Russell’s mistake and inherited the lead. For a while, Lewis Hamilton’s Ferrari appeared to be a threat. But intermediate tires begin to overheat as the track dries, which soon affected Hamilton and the other Ferrari driver, Charles Leclerc. At the end of 20 laps, Verstappen crossed the finish line first. Surprisingly, this was Verstappen’s first victory in Singapore, although he did not exactly see it as such.
“I want to win tomorrow,” Verstappen said after the race. “I don’t see this as a win in terms of actually winning a Grand Prix, you know. So we need to have a good qualifying. It will be very close with a lot of cars, I think, and we just need to try and make sure, of course, we are the best one out of them. But it will be, yeah, hopefully a good battle.”
His Red Bull was recently updated, and in combination with a power unit that has the strongest V6 in the field, if perhaps not the best hybrid system, it may be the fastest car on the grid, at least in Verstappen’s capable hands. A few hours later, he secured pole position in qualifying for Sunday’s race. Like the sprint finishing order, he would have the two Ferraris behind him, although with Leclerc ahead of Hamilton.
Sunday belongs to Verstappen
It was a victory from start to finish for Verstappen, even with the added complication of radio troubles. He could hear his engineer, but his replies were unintelligible. Such was his pace and tire management that he was able to stop for tires and leave the pits without giving up the lead.
“The car was really good on the tires. I could really manage them well. But to be honest, I think it was one of the first times that I’ve driven in clean air here in Singapore in the race, so I guess that’s also nice. And yeah, it’s been just a fantastic weekend for us,” Verstappen said.
The last three races have seen two wins and a second for Verstappen. “I really think, of course, that our car has taken a really nice step forward. But at the end of the day, yeah, it’s just been more driveable and more predictable. That’s what I wanted and needed from the car to find that last step to fight up front,” he said.
A newly resurgent Verstappen, currently in fourth place, could be a threat for second place in the standings by season’s end. Not that he really cares. “I hope that we can carry that momentum forward. We don’t really have anything to win in the championship, right? I think Kimi is miles ahead. For me, personally, I don’t care if I’m second, third, or fourth. Like, yeah, it doesn’t do anything. But I just want to have fun till the end, you know, try to go for a day’s success,” he said.
With both sprint and race poles, and sprint and race victories, it was almost a perfect weekend for Verstappen. He only missed out on the fastest lap to Leclerc, who came home second. It should have been a double podium for Ferrari. Hamilton did not have as much speed as Leclerc and started the race on an alternate strategy, using the medium tires instead of the softs.
Those did not last long. Hamilton stopped on lap 17, switching to the softs. With most of the 62 lap race left to run, that set up the potential for a very long afternoon. When Lance Stroll’s Aston Martin broke down as usual and caused a virtual safety car period, Hamilton inexplicably overrode the team’s instructions to follow Leclerc into the pits to solve the problem by making a cheap stop. Staying out on increasingly ruined tires left the seven time champion a sitting duck to cars behind, and he turned third into sixth, apologizing to his team on the radio afterward.
Teammate battles and a costly McLaren collision
Perhaps the cardinal rule for an F1 driver is “don’t hit your teammate.” Seeing teammates battle is not entirely surprising. If the cars are stratified by pace, and a team has two drivers of about the same caliber, then if both perform well, they should qualify in similar positions and find themselves racing together. Haas’ Oliver Bearman showed the right way to do that, going side by side with his teammate Esteban Ocon for several corners on lap 3, a battle that was sadly relegated to a small Picture in Picture window on the broadcast. A couple of laps later, Bearman followed it with a late move on Carlos Sainz’ Williams, too.
Sometimes, as Ferrari has faced in recent races, including this one, a team splits strategies between two cars but the car on newer, faster tires gets stuck behind the car on older, slower rubber. Sometimes the driver in front does what is best for the team and lets them by without a fight. Hamilton did just this late in the race when a much faster Leclerc on much newer tires needed to get by.
What no fan or team boss wants to see is both cars trying to take the same piece of tarmac. That is exactly what happened with McLaren’s pair during Saturday’s sprint. The orange cars were in fourth (Piastri) and fifth (Norris) on the last lap of the race when Norris decided to try to invert that order. The pair made contact, Piastri’s car broke, and Norris finished eighth. Nine points for the team turned into one point, and Norris had given the team extra work to do to repair the other car in time for qualifying.
McLaren’s team principal, Andrea Stella, called the incident “unacceptable” and presumably read the riot act to his driver. Norris was suitably chastened the following day, both offering to help Piastri in the race if he could, and telling journalists after the race that “I can’t attempt what I did. I should never have attempted it in the first place, even if the move was on. I’ve simply got to think more of the team that I represent rather than myself. It was a mistake on my part, and I let down the team,” Norris said.
Title math points toward Austin
With this Asian leg complete, the F1 circus now relocates to the Americas, starting with the Circuit of the Americas in Austin, Texas. There is a chance Antonelli could clinch the title if he leaves Texas 125 points ahead of his closest rival. Currently, that is George Russell, who trails by 102 points, with Hamilton in third at 111 points behind, and Verstappen 119 points behind Antonelli in fourth.
A win is worth 25 points, so it is possible, but it would require yet more bad luck from Russell. By this writer’s admittedly terrible arithmetic, if Russell finishes ninth and only scores two points to an Antonelli win, his title hopes are over. But if he finishes eighth and scores four points, or does better, his hopes stay alive at least until the following round in Mexico.
Similar elimination calculations exist to rule out Hamilton and Verstappen, with higher finishing positions required to stay in it because of their greater points deficits to the leader. Given Verstappen’s form recently, and Mercedes’ inability to make its own upgrade work quite so well, there is every prospect of a third consecutive Red Bull win in a couple of weeks. Lewis Hamilton has finished on the podium at COTA nine times now, so he knows how to find a result there, even if a Ferrari victory seems unlikely.
Ars will be on the ground in Austin, where I’m hoping to learn more about how the teams program these fiendishly complicated power units and see who is prepared to talk about those carbon neutral synthetic fuels the sport was so keen to tell me about just a few short years ago.
Verstappen’s Singapore sweep does not change the championship lead, but it strengthens the sense that Red Bull has found something. Antonelli remains in control, with Russell, Hamilton and Verstappen all facing difficult math in Austin. The next race will show whether Verstappen’s late season charge can reshape the fight behind the leader.
