Sainz dethroned Verstappen to claim his first win of the season in a thrilling race at the Marina Bay street circuit. Ferrari’s fourth win at the Singapore GP provided the first win of the season by a Driver from an opposing team to RedBull who finished 8th and 5th.
After qualifying on pole in Italy, Sainz was positioned first on the grid for the second consecutive race followed by Russell in second. The race began well for Ferrari with LeClerc gaining a position to move up to second. However Norris and Russel lost positions in the second corner with Hamilton leaving the track and coming back on in front of his two fellow British drivers. Hamilton later gave those positions back after the incident was noted. During this, Tsunoda retired from the race after a suspected puncture. Having started P11, Verstapppen had only made up one place within the first few laps, climbing up to P8 on lap six.
Pace and brake management played a large part of the first 20 laps up until Sargeant crashed into the wall causing a yellow flag due to debris on the track. The William’s driver managed to continue and made his way to the pits before a safety car was announced. During this pit window, Sainz was the first to come in quickly followed by the rest of the pack. Leclerc had to be held back due to traffic resulting in him losing positions to Russell and Norris. The RedBull’s of Verstappen and Perez chose not to pit until laps 40 and 41. The safety car restart produced multiple overtakes with those on brand new tyres easily making their way up the grid. Following the restart, Alonso received a 5 second time penalty due to locking up on his way into the pits and crossing over the white line.
On lap 44, the virtual safety car was brought out due to Ocon stopping on the track just outside of the pit exit. Mercedes chose this time to double stack their drivers, bolting on medium tyres. Russel and Hamilton returned to the track in P4 and P5, but their new tyres allowed them to make up time with the gap between Russel and Leclerc on lap 50 being five seconds. The British duo both managed to pass the Ferrari on lap 54 and both continued to close the gap between Norris and Sainz. On lap 59, a gap of only 1.7 seconds split the top four. However this all came to an end for Russell on the final lap of the race when he crashed into the wall after bouncing off the curb. The drivers then crossed the line with Sainz in P1, followed by Norris in P2 and Hamilton who rounded off the podium positions in P3.
The rest of the drivers were not too far behind, as Verstappen came in to finish the race in P5 just behind Leclerc in P4. A notable performance today was from Liam Lawson, currently covering for Daniel Ricciardo, who finished P9. Lawson became the first driver ever to score his maiden points during the Singapore Grand Prix.
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