While Red Bull and Max Verstappen were very much on a roll at the Singapore Grand Prix with victory in the sprint and then pole position, Britain’s George Russell was left having to roll with the punches. His vanishingly slight title hopes took another blow after he crashed out of the sprint race on the streets of the Marina Bay circuit.
Verstappen’s pole was a mighty lap to beat the Ferrari of Charles Leclerc into second by five-hundredths of a second as the Dutchman enjoys his best form of the season. A 50th pole, his first in Singapore coming on the back of a pole and win at the last round in Malaysia and pole and victory in the sprint at Marina Bay.
Behind him, the title is edging close to being decided. The championship leader, Kimi Antonelli, was fourth in qualifying for Mercedes, a decent return after he has struggled with the car over the weekend and of greater import given Russell, his teammate and title rival, will start from the back of the grid on Sunday.
Russell qualified in sixth – in the process saving soft tyres for use on Sunday – but will be opening at the back of the field because of the penalties applied for taking a new engine this weekend. He had no control over the reliability issues that saw his engine fail at the last round in Malaysia but his weekend in Singapore was compromised on Saturday after he made an error in the sprint and crashed out from the lead of the race.
He had taken the lead, passing Verstappen into the first corner but put his wheels on to the white lines at the final corner at the end of the opening lap. In the wet conditions, he lost the rear, spun and went into the barriers, out of the race and the team had to work fast just to repair the car before qualifying. Russell held his hands up for the mistake and it once more played into Antonelli’s hands.
“Miscalculation,” Russell said. “Came through the corner had more battery deployment than I thought, pushed me a little bit wider than I hoped and went onto the white line. Silly mistake. Big consequences.”
Big consequences indeed. Antonelli’s advantage over his teammate is now 89 points. If he leaves Singapore with a lead of 101 points, he can seal his first championship at the next round in Austin.
Verstappen was all but flawless in Singapore. Having thrown himself into the lap on the absolute edge, he found the limit with precision, his time of 1min 31.373sec on his first run in Q3 could not be matched. Lewis Hamilton chased him hard and then Leclerc edged into second place, but no one could better Verstappen’s effort. Hamilton finished third for Ferrari, with Lando Norris in fifth for McLaren.
It was another demonstration of how the recent upgrades have improved the Red Bull and how much more comfortable Verstappen was with the car in Singapore. It is a track where he has yet to win a GP and one of two, along with the Madring, on the current calendar where he has yet to take victory.
Verstappen won the sprint, which had been delayed because of heavy rain, with complete control from the front once he had inherited the lead after Russell’s crash. He had enough pace to comfortably see off Hamilton in second, who had made a superb start to move from sixth to third off the line. It was very much a processional affair, with overtaking all but impossible as drivers managed their tyres to the flag.
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The short-form dash was enlivened by late drama when Norris made a move on his teammate, Oscar Piastri, on the final lap, the pair clashed, taking the Australian out and dropping Norris to eighth, to the consternation of his McLaren team.
“Seeing two McLarens making contact like that is simply not acceptable,” said the team principal, Andrea Stella. “Something we will discuss with out drivers, we will iterate that the team interest is far bigger than any of us.”
That moved Antonelli up from sixth to fourth place, another indication that simply everything seems to be going the Italian’s way, even when he is just keeping his head down and grinding out a result.
The track was holding a sprint for the first time as F1 looks to enliven some of the more processional circuits, including having Monaco host a sprint next season. However, it was not welcomed with any enthusiasm by the drivers. “If it was dry that would probably have been the most boring race to have watched,” said Hamilton. An opinion echoed by his teammate Leclerc, who was third in the race.
“I don’t think it makes sense to have any sprint races on city tracks in general,” he said. “Here or Monaco, I don’t think it adds anything to the weekend.”
