Wet and Chaotic Singapore GP Sprint Goes to Verstappen

Amid falling rain and heavy attrition at Marina Bay, Max Verstappen won the Singapore Grand Prix sprint by 2.591 seconds ahead of Ferrari‘s Lewis Hamilton. With air temperatures sitting between 29.3 and 30.9°C, greasy asphalt and limited visibility triggered a single Safety Car period and contributed to nine cars failing to finish the 20-lap encounter.

Verstappen converted sprint pole cleanly to control proceedings, leaving Hamilton and Charles Leclerc to round out the podium places. For Mercedes, the session proved decidedly mixed: George Russell retired after just one lap, allowing Andrea Kimi Antonelli, who came home fourth, to stretch his championship lead over his team-mate from 84 to 89 points.

Repeated Pit Visits on the Intermediate Tyre

With standing water catching drivers out, tyre management turned into an exercise in high-frequency stops. A remarkable 13 finishers adopted an identical four-stint strategy, relying exclusively on the intermediate compound through rapid pit-lane rotations in the opening laps.

Verstappen ran intermediates for laps 1-2, swapped to a used intermediate set on lap 3, switched to another set on lap 4, and then relied on a used intermediate set from laps 5 to 20. Hamilton matched that cadence almost identically: stints on laps 1-2 and lap 3 (used) preceded another stop on lap 4, though his final 16-lap run on fresher rubber allowed him to set the fastest lap of the race, a 1:45.457 on the final tour. Leclerc mirrored the front pair with stops on laps 2, 3, and 4, bolting on two consecutive used sets before managing his intermediates to the flag.

Stewards Busy with Deletions and Midfield Movement

The tricky conditions forced mistakes across the board, prompting stewards to note or investigate eight separate incidents. Track limits also proved costly on the slippery street layout, with race control deleting 10 lap times during the sprint. Leclerc and Nico Hülkenberg collected two deletions each, while Valtteri Bottas and Pierre Gasly each had one lap scrubbed.

The chaos cleared substantial ground for those who kept their cars pointed straight. Carlos Sainz made the most of the 94 on-track overtakes, advancing 10 places from 22nd on the grid to finish 12th for Williams. Further up, Oliver Bearman gained seven spots to cross the line sixth for Haas, while Hülkenberg brought his Audi home in seventh to lock down critical points.

Qualifying for Sunday’s Grand Prix is next up at Marina Bay, getting underway on Saturday at 13:00 UTC.

Timing data: Jolpica-F1, tyres and race control: OpenF1. Charts and results card by Slip Stream GP.

This report was written automatically with the help of AI (Google Gemini), from public timing data. Every number in the tables and charts comes straight from the data. Spotted a mistake? Tell me.

Published by

Pasindu Senavirathna

Data

Jolpica-F1, OpenF1, Wikidata and Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons and MET Norway

Last updated

18 Oct 2026, 23:32