THE SINGAPORE GP IN 3 KEY MOMENTS
1 Ferrari surprises itself with Vettel victory
On the streets of Singapore, 392 days and 22 races after his last win, Sebastian Vettel finally took his 53rd grand prix victory. It was, however, rather against the run of play and the nature of the win
– a consequence of a tactical call from the Ferrari pitwall – left his team-mate Charles Leclerc fuming.
Vettel had impressed on his first Q3 run in qualifying, but then squandered his second run and was then usurped by a brilliant final lap from Leclerc, who secured another pole position. Lewis Hamilton also improved on his last run and the Mercedes driver demoted Vettel to third.
At the start of the race, Leclerc led away as Vettel tried and failed to snatch second from Hamilton, while Max Verstappen held fourth place in the Red Bull. Despite the presence of a third DRS zone on the streets of Singapore, this would be yet another race dictated by the inability to pass easily, fear of losing track position, and the consequent need to nurse the tyres.
For the frontrunners this meant babysitting the soft tyres on which they’d started. Ferrari, keen to avoid being undercut by cars behind, set an almost absurdly slow target laptime for Leclerc to prevent any tempting gaps appearing between the leaders and the medium-shod midfielders come pitstop time. But this tactic cut both ways.
When a convenient gap in traffic did appear, thanks to Toro Rosso trying to undercut Daniil Kvyat ahead of Sergio Pérez and Racing Point responding with a stop of its own, Red Bull immediately spotted it and signalled Verstappen to pit on lap 19. Ferrari responded and quickly called Vettel in to prevent the potential undercut.
This decided the outcome of the race because Vettel flew on his new hard-compound rubber – whereas Leclerc and Hamilton, when they tried to put the hammer down ahead of their own planned stops, found their soft tyres had nothing left to give. So both Vettel and Verstappen ultimately leapfrogged Hamilton, and Vettel inadvertently gained another spot at the expense of his own frustrated team-mate.
“Max was ready to stop, so we had to protect Seb’s position and it was also our best opportunity to try and pass Hamilton,” said Ferrari team boss Mattia Binotto. “That was the right time to stop Sebastian – no discussion. He then drove very well and got ahead of Charles. That’s racing.”
In the heat of the moment, though, this didn’t seem manifestly obvious to Leclerc, who demanded answers from the Ferrari pitwall, describing the situation as “unfair.” Despite three Safety Car periods in quick succession, and access to a higher power mode, Leclerc couldn’t get by Vettel and Ferrari elected not to impose team orders.
“I know that Charles is frustrated, but that’s positive because it’s the right attitude to have,” added Binotto. “By the time he sees the full picture, he will understand the reason for the choice.”
2 Hamilton urges Mercedes to keep the pressure on
A deep technical rethink at Ferrari resulted in a major upgrade package for Singapore – and the Scuderia’s performance there gave Mercedes a major scare.
Lewis Hamilton qualified well but expressed frustration both during and after the race at a
strategy that cost him track position and consigned him to fourth place. Once Verstappen and Vettel seized the initiative by pitting first, Hamilton’s options were reduced, and when Leclerc made his one and only pitstop from the lead on lap 20, the world champion was locked into an unfavourable strategy. Mercedes had to leave him out so that by pitting later he would have fresher tyres at the end.
That meant another seven laps on soft tyres that were already shot, and then three Safety Car deployments late on negated any advantage the fresher rubber might have had.
Not only that, poor Valtteri Bottas had to field a “Valtteri, it’s James” message after his stop,
telling him to slow down so as not to undercut his team-mate. Afterwards Hamilton said he thought Mercedes should have pitted him before Vettel.
“I knew we should have tried the undercut,” he said. “We should have taken the risk. But we didn’t. We take this on the chin, it’s painful for us as we could have easily won, but it didn’t work out.”
When asked whether he felt Ferrari were gaining the upper hand following their three successive victories, Hamilton said: “If feels like they are hungrier at the moment, so we have to step it up. We’re still the best team but we’ve got to stop dragging our feet. We’ll debrief, get back in the scrum and come back fighting at the next race.”
3 Red Bull fails to live up to expectations
Max Verstappen finished the Singapore GP in third and was openly disappointed in the weekend’s performance on a track at which the team was expected to challenge for victory.
“Not good enough,” said Verstappen of his race weekend. “We came here to win and clearly didn’t. Qualifying was worse than the race, but I’d say it was a wake-up call. From Austria onwards, it was maybe our worst race in terms of performance, somewhere we expected to be really good.
“I have a few ideas why it went wrong, so we will analyse them. The layout is not that amazing for us, but you can clearly see the car is not working through the corners.”
Since cornering performance has traditionally been one of Red Bull’s strong suits that’s a staggering revelation. But the
RB15 was noticeably stiff-legged as it clattered over the bumps and kerbs, struggling for poise and traction.
Team-mate Alex Albon finished sixth on his first visit to Singapore, spending the majority of the race tucked under the rear wing of Bottas’s Mercedes.