Leclerc's final glimpse of victory; seconds into the Singapore GP
Red Bull
Max Verstappen won this race when he qualified five hundredths faster than Charles Leclerc around the humid night-time Singapore streets on Saturday. Because there was nothing between the Red Bull and Ferrari this weekend. Had Verstappen started from the much less grippy dirty side on Sunday there’s no way he’s leading into Turn 1. He only just managed to retain the lead starting from the grippy side, achieved by the perfect intimidating placement from the outside despite Leclerc’s better getaway. “Yes, I gave you the least amount of space to send it in,” laughed Max to the guy he’s been going wheel-to-wheel with since they were karting kids.
We heard some say that Leclerc had bottled it by not sitting it out. But from the position Max had put him in, he had no way of knowing when or if the Red Bull was going to yield – and if he’d committed, a collision looked highly likely. He just didn’t fancy the risk. Not against Verstappen with nothing to lose, trying to take his first-ever Singapore win. So with that beautiful combination of judgement and reputational presence he made the crucial move that won him the race from the crucial pole he’d won the day before.
It was a good match race as they’d each started on the soft tyre, which turned out to be by far the best choice. Lewis Hamilton, running third in the other Ferrari, had gone for the medium, giving Ferrari a nice strategy option. But the split did not come into strategic play because the medium wasn’t a great tyre on the day and soon Hamilton was holding cars on the faster soft tyre – the McLarens and Kimi Antonelli’s Mercedes – up behind him as Verstappen and Leclerc ran away.
For the first 10 laps or so, every time Verstappen tried to get out of Leclerc’s boost range, the Ferrari came with him. If it could do this from the turbulent zone, might it have been able to have pulled out a gap to victory if running in front? We’ll never know. Inevitably, the Ferrari’s tyres ran out first as the car in the dirty air and Verstappen began easing steadily clear in what was expected to be a straight one-stopping race.
Leclerc battles Verstappen at the start while Hamilton is set to struggle on his medium tyres
Red Bull
There was a complication to that one-stop plan for Hamilton. By the time he got to lap 17-18, with Lando Norris, Oscar Piastri and Antonelli still stacked up right behind him, he was in severe undercut danger and his mediums were gripless. So on lap 18, with 43 laps to go, he was brought in from 10sec off the lead and fitted with softs, with the pitwall plan being to convert to a two-stop. Would retaining the one-stop via a switch to the hards not have been better? Maybe. But no-one had touched the hard and the suspicion was it was going to be 2sec off the pace initially, potentially disastrous and sure to lose him two or three places of track position to the McLarens and Antonelli. Only if the soft starters had been forced to switch to two-stop might Ferrari’s choice on Hamilton’s car have worked. But the softs ran long, making Hamilton’s initial choice disastrous and his difficulties were about to compromise the whole team.
Hamilton’s pace on the new softs was super-strong – and this is what made Ferrari’s race very complicated. On tyres 18 laps newer than Leclerc’s and the pitstop loss being around 22sec, Hamilton had the initial 30sec gap to his team-mate down to 25sec within five laps, taking them to lap 23. Leclerc needed to stop on lap 24, to respond to Antonelli’s stop the lap before. He comfortably cleared Antonelli but also got out in front of Hamilton in the other Ferrari.
With Leclerc now on mediums that took a while to come up to temperature, he was holding Hamilton up, preventing him from fully exploiting softs that were only six laps old and still fast. Such was the tyre compound offset that even a six-lap-old set of softs was probably faster than a brand new set of mediums. “I’ve just lost 2sec on that last lap,” complained Lewis on lap 26.
Hamilton running hot behind Leclerc
Grand Prix Photo
So it was another of those awkward pitwall situations for Ferrari as Hamilton complained about the time he was losing, but they couldn’t compromise Leclerc’s race. Leclerc was ahead because he’d qualified better and started on the faster tyre. He therefore had strategic priority.
Eventually Leclerc’s mediums switched on and he began lapping quickly, but it took 10 laps before he really began to leave the very frustrated Hamilton behind. “Ok, I’ll let him go,” Hamilton radioed in obvious frustration.
Ironically, that tyre compound split which had sounded so smart pre-race in giving the team two options against Verstappen turned out only to increase the Red Bull driver’s advantage – because Leclerc and Hamilton ended up getting in each other’s hair due to Leclerc’s earlier-than-planned stop. Leclerc wouldn’t ordinarily have emerged from his stop in front of Hamilton. He only did so because the stop was earlier than planned – because of Antonelli’s lap 23 stop.
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That potentially put Leclerc on a two-stop (or at least a less certain one-stop), which was not the original plan. Hamilton seemed set for a certain two-stop because of how early he’d been forced to make his first stop. So with both cars now potentially on a two-stop, telling Leclerc to move aside was a non-starter.
Had it not been for the Antonelli potential undercut complication, Ferrari was planning on keeping Leclerc out there chasing Verstappen for a few laps longer and staying with a one-stop. That way, Hamilton would have continued lapping fast on his softs in clear air, Leclerc would have exited behind him but with Hamilton needing to stop again. It would have been a straightforward one-stop vs two-stop strategy contest between the Ferraris.
Instead, Antonelli had compromised Leclerc’s race which in turn had compromised Hamilton’s. But if they’d moved Leclerc out of Hamilton’s way, Leclerc would’ve been delayed when Hamilton’s older softs became slower than Leclerc’s mediums. And if both were on a two-stop, the guy with strategic priority privilege as the car ahead (Leclerc) would have just lost position to his team-mate under team instructions. It may have sounded like Ferrari being indecisive, but the reality was Ferrari was between a rock and a hard place, compromised by the confluence of the tyre compound offsets and Antonelli’s stop. It was no-one’s fault.
There were to be further ramifications on Hamilton’s race of this awkward situation, triggered by a lap 38 virtual safety car (VSC). Verstappen – who’d been around 6sec ahead of Leclerc – stayed out on his mediums. So Ferrari did the opposite with Leclerc, taking advantage of the reduced time loss of a stop under the VSC to two-stop – and into the bargain swap the mediums for the much better soft. With that, he hoped to chase down Verstappen from around 15sec behind with 23 laps remaining. It was the perfectly logical plan, even if it turned out he didn’t have enough pace advantage over Verstappen to make it work. The tyre was faster, but not by enough – as Verstappen judged things perfectly to win by 7sec.
That VSC also offered Hamilton a cheap two-stop and a perfect opportunity to get off those ancient softs. He was called in but stayed out. He later said he missed the pit entry as he received the message. He did, but by a tiny margin that he could easily have corrected with a late swerve. He stayed out because he chose to.
He had not missed it by the timing of the VSC – Leclerc ahead of him had just pitted, after all – but by when he was told to pit. That was a simple post-rationalisation. Of course he would know that the VSC offered a time-cheap opportunity to get off the old tyres. But he wanted to try to beat Leclerc by banking the second position Leclerc’s stop had given him and going to the end on the ancient softs. Even before the VSC he’d been in deep discussion with his race engineer Carlo Santi about whether he could stay out – and the poor communication between them in that conversation contributed to Hamilton’s decision. As probably did his frustration for how he’d been delayed by Leclerc earlier.
In trying to make the calculation about whether it would be feasible to maintain position, he’d asked Santi what lap times the others had been doing at the end of their stints. But had not been given a clear answer. His instinct was to stay out and without the relevant info he went with that instinct. Even after the VSC ended and Leclerc, on his new tyres, was 2sec a lap faster, Santi was still urging Hamilton to come in – as Santi could see that not only was Leclerc coming past easily but there was a further threat from the new-tyred McLarens and Antonelli (though Piastri was delayed by an extra stop for a puncture). But still Hamilton resisted. With 18 laps to go, Hamilton was running 2sec off the pace = 36sec. The pitstop loss for new tyres was 22sec. Therefore, to stop was a no-brainer, even after the VSC. But Hamilton – again without the clarity those numbers would have provided – overruled Santi until the defeated engineer replied: “Ok, we can try,” surely knowing they were doomed.
They were. Norris arrived on his tail first and they both braked late for Turn 1. Hamilton took to the run-off but rejoined still ahead. Norris ran wide, stayed on track, but was pounced upon by Antonelli who then put an easy pass on Hamilton the following lap for third in the updated Mercedes W17 (with Russell still in the old one, starting from the back). Norris went by the Ferrari a lap later and Piastri relieved Hamilton of fifth on the last lap.
This was Hamilton’s Sepang ‘let’s gamble now that the damage is done’ strategy, but with the coin flipping the other way. It was absolutely the wrong choice. He acknowledged as much afterwards. “Sorry boys. I let you down today with that strategy. My call. I lost us valuable points.” He clearly took it hard and wasn’t available for his scheduled TV pen appearances later and put out a short statement instead.
Liam Lawson, as usual, was faultless in winning a distant best of the rest, seventh in his Racing Bulls, staying just ahead of Nico Hülkenberg’s Audi throughout, with Russell’s Mercedes and Isack Hadjar’s Red Bull coming through from the back for ninth and 10th respectively.
“The car has taken a big step forwards,” said Verstappen of the RB22. “Particularly from Baku. It’s just a lot more driveable and predictable now… There were times early in the season where it was actually a bit scary. Now, I don’t have to worry about the championship and I can just enjoy myself in it.” Sounds ominous.
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