If a two-year absence from the Formula 1 calendar has caused any of the 20 drivers to forget or underestimate the scale of the challenge posed by F1’s original night race, the 2022 Singapore Grand Prix weekend has left them all in doubt.
Max Verstappen landed in the vibrant Asian city-state in his sixth attempt to clinch a second consecutive world championship. With a seemingly unstoppable run of five-race wins behind him, Saturday’s pole position at the Marina Bay Street Circuit 21 of the 23 corners looks certain to be in the hands of the championship leader. But Red Bull’s maths error denied him – he was told to abandon his final qualifying run.
However, there seems to be no reason to completely cancel the chances of victory. Verstappen’s inevitable Second World Drivers’ crown is defined by his relentless charges from midfield to victory. Eighth on the grid felt like an achievable challenge, even around a real street circuit like this.
Instead, Charles Leclerc will have a second shot at turning Singapore pole into victory after winning the last time he ran around the city in 2019 F1. But the Ferrari driver knew he would face stiff competition from Sergio Perez’s Red Bull and Lewis Hamilton’s Mercedes. Both are a whisker away from taking the top spot for themselves on Saturday.
Singapore was the longest night of the F1 season for its drivers, with heavy rain 90 minutes into the schedule adding to the challenge. FIA F1 race director Eduardo Freitas – as he did in Monaco – delayed the start by more than an hour to avoid track conditions, with the flooded streets no longer suitable for racing.
As the usual chant of criticism of the FIA for starting a race in completely wet conditions echoed around the online supporter stands, the field lined up perfectly on the grid, Pirelli’s green-walled medium tires in unison. Leclerc’s lead lasted only meters when the lights went out. It was only the third time the second-placed driver beat the leader into the first corner.
“I still don’t know if it’s just me doing things wrong or something else,” Leclerc later said. “The only thing I felt was that I had a little bit of wheelspin and I lost it and I saw that Czecho had an amazing start.”
Perez had the time and space he needed to put his car into the first corner and secure the lead, while those behind him who started on the ‘dirty’ side of the grid had a much cleaner break than them. side by side. Carlos Sainz Jnr muscled out Hamilton for third, while Lando Norris took fifth ahead of Fernando Alonso. But back in the pack, Verstappen was swamped off the line when he crashed into an anti-stent, making an already difficult afternoon even more difficult.
Hamilton looked impressively quick around the drying track on Saturday, but on the second lap of the race, he was less comfortable in the middle stages in the fiery Mercedes.
“I told you about these tires,” Hamilton relayed to the team. “You’ll have to listen to me in the future. It won’t catch.”
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But the two leaders looked more than capable of hustling around the wet track as Hamilton struggled. As Perez shadowed Leclerc as they explored the wet track, Sainz fell more than five seconds behind his team-mate in third as the fifth lap of the race began.
Drivers took care on the opening lap as they handled their middle tires carefully. Ranked 19th, Zhou Guanyu is trying to make progress in the field as his family watches from the Alfa Romeo garage as they travel from China to Singapore. In round seven, Nicolas Laffey proved to be spending more time with his friends than Zhou expected, and almost five years later he drove into an Alfa Romeo next to him, earning their seed and income. Latifi grid drop for Suzuka next weekend.
The safety car finally deployed and robbed Perez and Leclerc of the advantage at the front. A pause in the action allowed the remaining 18 drivers to assess the situation as everyone stayed on the track with their intermediate tyres. The consensus was that wearing the mediums until they worked out the likes was the best policy.
“Still wet,” assessed Norris, the fifth. “It doesn’t dry as quickly as it dries to get fit, so maybe this ‘slick-termediate’ is the best choice.”
The field spent two laps behind the safety car before race control declared a restart at the end of lap 10. Perez led the charge but appeared to fall back a bit too far off the track exiting the tight Turn 13 hairpin. Speed setting Mercedes road car.
“The 10 car lengths from Perez are now more than the safety car,” reported Leclerc, who knew enough to get into trouble with the stewards and trap him.
When the green flags flew on lap 11, Perez led. As before, he and Leclerc dropped Sainz as the field refused to offer any grip on the stiff track surface, despite the rain having long since stopped. Verstappen was now seventh behind Alonso, but was struggling to catch up with the Alpine driver.
That was until lap 21, when Alonso parked his car on the side of the wall as he approached the short turn 10, allowing Verstappen to pass him on the outside, the third retirement of the race. Break 350 starts.
The Virtual Safety Car gave them another chance to test the conditions on the pit wall. Verstappen gave the Red Bull team a helpful unequivocal track review.
Verstappen reported: “It’s not tricky yet mate. “Somehow it doesn’t dry out. It’s still worse than Quali.”
But in 16th place, starting from pit road, George Russell switched to dry tires and attracted the opportunity to quickly move through the field. He lobbied the team, which eventually agreed, and Mercedes became the first team to run on a center tire on their car, more than 45 minutes into the race. Almost immediately, it became clear that Russell’s bold gamble was unlikely to pay off.
“It won’t catch…” Russell relayed. Bidding his time in front of Alexander Albon at every corner.
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As Russell struggled to manage his flat tyres, two more Virtual Safety Car periods – with Albo hitting the turn eight wall and losing his front wing and Esteban Ocon joining his team-mate in retirement – offered two more opportunities for the field to change. Slips. But still, no one except Russell felt it was worth giving it a shot.
Approaching the halfway mark of the originally scheduled race distance, Perez’s lead over Leclerc had grown to 4.5 seconds, his highest point yet. Perez’s race engineer Hugh Bird hailed the “beautiful” driver. “Keep doing what you’re doing.”
The closest battle was between Sainz and Hamilton for third place, with Mercedes now within second of Ferrari. But on the 33rd lap, running down the long straight to turn seven, Hamilton was trailing behind the Ferrari when his braking locked up and he crashed into the TecPro barrier. Somehow, Hamilton’s front wing remained largely intact – just a loose skid plate – and he managed to get back and forth on track to continue the race, all hopes of a podium now dashed.
“I’m very sorry about that,” Hamilton apologized to the team. “I beat him a lot.”
Incidentally, Hamilton was called to the pits to replace his broken tire at the same time that many of his rivals finally switched to dry tyres. Leclerc was the first of the leaders to make the move, but Red Bull responded on the next lap, mirroring the Ferrari by switching to medium tires and allowing Perez to take the lead with a slightly increased advantage.
As the drivers felt the pinch on the new dry tires, Yuki Shunoda dropped all the way down to 10th, locking in a race-ending pace and heading into the barriers. As the crashed AlphaTauri posed a major threat to oncoming cars, it was little surprise when the full safety car was deployed for second, with Perez losing all of his eight-second lead.
Norris’ McLaren and Daniel Ricciardo – the only drivers in the middle class to start – eventually made it to the intermediates, putting Norris in fourth behind Sainz, while Ricciardo took the soft tire and joined him in sixth.
Preparing for the restart, Perez followed the same routine behind the safety car as he did during his first deployment, falling back significantly at the exit of turn 13. To take the green flag, two car lengths behind Leclerc.
Verstappen made a good run at Norris’ McLaren in fifth as he headed the six-turn kink and pulled to seven. But the track was still tricky off the line and Verstappen found his car unwilling to stop the moment he hit the brake pedal, sending him crashing down the escape route in thick white tire smoke.
Verstappen now rejoined the track on damaged tires and said: “I went all the way down.” “I have to dig.”
By the time Red Bull sent the championship leader to the new, undamaged smooths, he had dropped back to 14th – quickly gaining two places in a collision between George Russell and Mick Schumacher.
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Although he still held the lead, Perez was now bigger in the mirrors than Leclerc had been in the Grand Prix. With the race now set to go down to a time limit rather than a lap count, Perez faced the prospect of holding off Ferrari for half an hour after winning the race – and Leclerc was in hunt mode.
“You can activate DRS,” Leclerc said, looking at the Red Bull’s rear wing. With the race director listening to him, minutes later the system activated for the first time, allowing Leclerc to use the device to chase down the leader.
He put Perez under more pressure than before, but Leclerc couldn’t even get close enough to catch a glimpse of the leader. However, a mistake by Leclerc at turn 16 proved crucial for Perez, as he left the Ferrari out of DRS territory on lap 48 with just under 20 minutes remaining in the race. Leclerc was again within second of the Red Bull.
As the minutes ticked by, Perez began to pull a small gap to his pursuer. But while the hopes of victory seemed to be fading for Leclerc, the team suddenly passed on an important piece of information.
“We have to stay within five seconds of Perez,” Leclerc was warned with 13 minutes left. “He may face punishment at the end of the race.”
The FIA announced that stewards would investigate Perez after the race. Suddenly there was a new threat to his hopes of victory.
“We’re under investigation for a safety car violation,” Bird warned Perez before giving him a simple mission. “let’s go”
Realizing he needed at least a five-second buffer to protect his lead from frequent time penalties, Perez immediately dropped the race’s fastest lap. In the final 10 minutes, Perez pushed as hard as he dared, increasing his lead by two seconds to a crucial five-second mark in the final lap. Leclerc failed to respond and Perez was ordered not to lift off the throttle until the car was over the checkered flag.
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Perez was greeted by the customary shower of fireworks as he crossed the line after the two-hour limit, and his advantage stood at 7.5 seconds. Red Bull celebrated, but it’s an anxious wait to see if the win will be confirmed after the inspection. For Ferrari, it was just a matter of hoping their predictions were right.
“If there is a penalty for Perez, we don’t know what the penalty will be,” Xavier Marcos Padros told Leclerc after the match. “It could be two five-second penalties.”
“When will we know about the punishment?” Leclerc asked. “We will know after the stage,” he said.
Perez will give an official confirmation – arriving at 1.42am local time – that he has been disciplined and given a five-second time penalty, and therefore has retained the win. The winner of the Singapore Grand Prix was finally announced, six hours after the race was originally scheduled to start.
“I felt great,” Perez said. “It was a very difficult race.
We were going to a few places that were really wet, really wet and extremely treacherous. [easy] To make a mistake. I had many times. So I’m really happy to finish the race first. Secondly, to win this competition is something very special.
In the final season, Leclerc was left regretting his start when he finally lost the lead after failing to overtake Red Bull.
“Unfortunately, we had a bad start and from then on we were a bit on the back foot,” he said. “I tried to put a lot of pressure on Cheko. Of course, today I was disappointed in the secondary.
Sainz claimed a solitary third place to complete the podium, unable to get ahead of either but was freed from the second half of the race after a major mistake by Hamilton.
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“Unfortunately, I didn’t have the speed, so it was very lonely for me,” he said.
“At one point I had to calm down a bit and recover my confidence because I couldn’t go on and once the confidence recovered and in the last 10-15 laps. I managed to hurry but it was too late.
There have been significant changes to the Developer Championship in the past. The pair of Norris’ McLarens and Ricciardo finished fourth and fifth, leapfrogging the team over the Alpine and returning to fourth place.
Aston Martin took the biggest points of the season with Lance Stroll sixth and Sebastian Vettel eighth, the latter passing Verstappen’s Red Bull on the final lap. However, the green team managed to leapfrog their two rivals to take seventh in the standings.
It was a night that could have been for Hamilton, another mistake cost Verstappen a place after he could only manage ninth. Pierre Gasly took the last point in tenth.
Verstappen’s winning streak may have ended in Singapore, but Perez kept his team at the top of the podium. After a disappointing weekend for the championship leader, he will at least take solace in knowing he only has to wait another week to make a second attempt at his second World Cup.
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