Race Review: Norris dominate Singapore GP

Lando Norris converted his pole position to a dominant win over Max Verstappen and Oscar Piastri at the Formula 1 Singapore Grand Prix. Lando looked like the driver to beat all weekend and so he was but Ferrari stubbed its toe on Saturday leaving the door open for George Russel to finish in P4 ahead of Charles Leclerc in P5.

Win

A win for Lando Norris and McLaren by dominating the entire weekend in one of F1’s more demo ding races. Lando had a few adventures on the way to his victory by clipping the wall a couple times but he managed to keep it all together. Oscar recovered well from qualifying and executed a good strategy to get him back to the podium. Lando maximized his points haul against Max and McLaren extend their lead in the constructor’s championship.

A win for Red Bull and Max Verstappen who have struggled of late. A P2 finish was a win despite finishing 20s behind Norris and it is a damage limitation run for Max in the driver’s title.

A win of Mercedes who looked way off the mark early on Friday but they managed to find some grip and pace to finish P4 and P6 so a good turnaround for the team when most felt this race would be between Ferrari and McLaren.

A win for Nico Hulkenberg for finishing P9 for some points and a great result for the team who are under threat from Williams in the constructors title for 7th. Great run from Nico on both Saturday and Sunday!

A win for Fernando Alonso who quietly drove to P8 with little to no TV coverage or mention.

Fail

A fail for Ferrari who dropped the ball during Saturday’s qualifying. They looked to have pace to recover but the strategy didn’t play out and this left them off the podium.

A fail for Alpine, Sauber, Lance Stroll, Alex Albon, Kevin Magnussen and Yuki Tsunoda for all being at the back and out of the points.

WTH

Not sure if Daniel Ricciardo’s fast lap late in the race was a consolation prize but it certainly seems like it. Hello Liam Lawson.

I also find it interesting that the teams said there was a complete lack of consistency with the tire sets. George, in particular, was very critical of that. Why would that be?

Pireli’s view:

“All in all, this was a relatively straightforward race, without a single neutralisation, the first time that has happened in the history of this race. The one-stop proved to be definitely the quickest and all three compounds behaved as expected. The Medium and the Hard clearly saw the most use, but the Soft also proved its worth, as could be seen for example in the times set by Hamilton on full fuel load in his first 17 lap stint, or with Tsunoda over 28 laps in the second part of the race, with a perfectly acceptable level of degradation.

“When it comes to evaluating tyre performance, an important factor to consider is the level of pace management adopted by the drivers, together with how much traffic they encountered at various stages of the race. That was particularly relevant with the Medium, because depending on their pace, some drivers were able to extend their first stint well beyond the window predicted by the strategy simulations, which opened up the possibility of using the Soft, as was the case with the aforementioned Tsunoda and Gasly.

“After four races in five weeks, Formula 1 takes a short break now, ahead of the triple-header in the Americas. But for our group, the work on track continues, with four days of testing which is only possible thanks to the vital support of the teams, in this case, Mercedes, Red Bull, Ferrari and McLaren.”

Singapore GP Results: