It was an F1 race weekend with a difference in Singapore. After FIA President Mohammed Ben Sulayem made a special and unexpected appeal last Thursday for the sport’s drivers to stop swearing over the radio, McLaren’s Lando Norris showed his mettle to not only snatch pole position away from championship leader Max Verstappen on the Saturday, but go on to dominate the race from start to finish on Sunday—winning by over 20 seconds. He closed the gap in the driver’s championship to 52 points by defeating Verstappen.
In his stunning triumph, the British driver touched the wall twice, damaging his front wing at Turn 14. However, he managed to avoid having to repair it while switching to hard tyres.
Later on in that same stint, Norris brushed the wall again at Turn 10 with his rear right as Mercedes’ George Russell did in the final laps of last year’s race.
At the start, Verstappen in P2 was unable to overtake Norris into the first corner, and the Brit rapidly extended his lead to over one second to guarantee that the Dutchman would not be able to launch a DRS attack in the first few laps.
Given the directive to establish a lead of five seconds “in the mid-teens” on the lap count, Norris fulfilled this request ahead of schedule, accumulating that advantage by lap 11, and then began to pull away from the Dutchman’s by nearly a second every lap.
After his brief run-ins with the wall, Norris became more comfortable in the later stages, and he tickled a substantial 30-second lead before being instructed to “bring the car home”.
Although Daniel Ricciardo’s hot lap on soft tires in the race’s last lap ultimately prevented Norris from picking up the fastest lap as well as the win, Lando nevertheless crossed the finish line to secure his third victory of the year after slowing down and navigating traffic.
Verstappen finished 20.9 seconds later, and Oscar Piastri’s third place finish guaranteed a 1-3 podium finish for McLaren.
Russell just missed out on a podium in fourth after fighting off a rapidly finishing Charles Leclerc at the end, having become the lead Mercedes after overtaking the soft-starting Hamilton earlier on in the race.
CARLIST THOUGHTS
After winning triple driver’s titles on the trot, it’s great to see that Verstappen finally has some real competition in the two McLarens and that Mercedes—through Hamilton and Russell, and Ferrari—mostly through Leclerc, are also giving the Dutchman a run for his money.