George Russell took a clear victory in the Singapore Grand Prix from Max Verstappen, while a three-four finish for Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri has secured McLaren its second consecutive constructors’ championship.
Russell got a perfect launch off the line to keep Verstappen in his mirrors and piled almost 10s on the field in the opening 20 laps to all but secure his victory.
The Mercedes driver briefly came under threat after the pit stops, when Verstappen appeared to have the pace to catch him in the second stint, but a single mistake from the Dutchman at the chicane, sending him wide, immediately broke his challenge. It freed Russell to claim his and Mercedes’s second victory of the season and the fifth win of his career.
“It feels amazing,” he said. “I’m just so grateful for the team. They did an amazing job this whole weekend.
“We don’t really know where this performance came from, but I’m really, really happy.”
While Russell’s start was serene, the opening lap was anything but for the championship contenders.
Verstappen’s start was tardy from the front row, leaving him vulnerable to Piastri from third. The Australian, however, found himself boxed onto the outside of Turn 3 by his fast-starting teammate Norris, who launched from fifth.
Norris lunged past the sister McLaren from the apex, but a fractional misjudgment had him rear-ending Verstappen and breaking his front wing, and in correcting the error he barged Piastri perilously close to the wall.
Norris emerged from the incident third ahead of the furious Piastri in fourth.
“Are we cool with Lando just barging me out of the way, or what’s the go there?” he radioed, and he upped the ante when he found his team unresponsive to his concerns.
“That’s not fair,” he said. “I’m sorry, that’s not fair. If he has to avoid another car by crashing into his teammate, then that’s a pretty **** job of avoiding.”
The team committed only to a post-race discussion; meanwhile Norris pursued Verstappen up the road, his damaged front wing no impediment to his performance.
Their duel twisted on lap 19 when Verstappen was hauled into the pits to guard against Norris undercut. The Dutchman swapped his used softs for fresh hards, and a strong out-lap forced Norris to run deeper into the race to build a tire offset.
But his and Piastri’s strategies were compromised by Charles Leclerc pitting immediately after Verstappen. With fresh tires the Ferrari was closing in on the McLaren drivers’ pit window, limiting how long they could wait to stop.
It was a repeat of the scenario from the Italian Grand Prix, where Piastri was stopped first to guard against the undercut and ended up ahead of Norris, triggering team orders to reverse positions.
The team again asked Norris whether he would be happy to risk being undercut, but this time he rejected the offer, insisting that he stop first.
Norris pitted cleanly on lap 26 and Piastri on the following tour, but the Australian’s service was slow, dropping him 9s behind his teammate and out of podium contention. It freed Norris to focus his attention forward, and Verstappen running deep at the chicane on lap 36 dropped the Red Bull Racing driver directly into his clutches.
“The rear is like a handbrake,” Verstappen said, complaining of handling problems. “It’s so hard to drive.”
Norris closed the gap to less than a second on lap 46 as the pair navigated slow-moving traffic, the Briton sticking to the Dutchman’s gearbox to prevent lapped cars from giving his rival a chance to escape. But he got close enough only once to try on a move – a lunge around the outside on lap 53 that was never likely to force the reigning champion into a mistake. Unable to find a way past, Verstappen was able to claim a fraught second place just 0.636s ahead of Norris.
“The whole race was quite difficult,” he said. “More difficult than I hoped for for a lot of different reasons.
“A few things that we need to understand [about] why these things went wrong today; but even then, around here, even if you have more pace, you can’t pass without anything crazy happening, so I think second was then the maximum result.”
Norris’s third place guaranteed McLaren the constructors’ title regardless of other results, securing the Woking team’s first back-to-back titles since its four successive triumphs of 1988–91.
“I gave it my all today,” Norris said. “A few chances side by side and some good little bits of battling, but it was just too difficult to overtake, which is a shame because the pace was very strong today,
“I’m happy with today. I got forward two positions. We won as a team the constructors’ once again, so I’m most happy about that.”
Piastri finished a disgruntled fourth, the Australian’s championship lead cut to 22 points over Norris and 63 points over Verstappen.
Kimi Antonelli finished fifth after a battle with the Ferrari drivers. He dropped behind Charles Leclerc on the opening lap but got the Ferrari driver back in the second stint before keeping a fast-finishing Lewis Hamilton at arm’s length in the closing stages.
Leclerc finished sixth ahead of Hamilton, who had been on track to finish at least sixth after a late second stop for soft tires, but a brake failure dropped him to seventh at the flag. However, the stewards issued him a five-second penalty after the race for exceeding track limits as he limped to the finish, costing him one more position.
Fernando Alonso recovered from a slow pit stop with some gutsy overtaking to finish eighth (which became seventh after Hamilton’s penalty) at the head of the midfield ahead of Oliver Bearman, who scored for just the second time in 13 rounds, and Carlos Sainz, who gained eight places from 18th on the grid after running until lap 51 of 62 before making his sole stop.
Isack Hadjar finished 11th after battling a power unit issue that cost him several tenths per lap, fending off Yuki Tsunoda for the place.
Lance Stroll finished 13th ahead fo Alex Albon, Liam Lawson, Franco Colapinto, Gabriel Bortoleto, Esteban Ocon, Pierre Gasly and Nico Hulkenberg.
UPDATED RESULTS (after Hamilton penalty)
