Winners and losers from F1's wet Singapore GP sprint race

For all the flashpoints the Singapore Grand Prix sprint race threw up, the bulk of the action was actually pretty processional.

But that still demanded cool heads of the 22 drivers - some of whom were more successful at keeping cool than others.

Here's our pick of winners and losers from the sixth and final sprint race of the 2026 Formula 1 season.

Loser: Russell (DNF)

“I just misjudged it,” George Russell said of his early race-ending Singapore crash.

Even if this is likely to make no difference to his ever-dwindling title hopes, Russell is in a position where, for his own sake, he needs to end the year on a high.

Grabbing the lead from Verstappen at the start in the sprint looked like the perfect way to do that before a grid penalty hobbles the rest of his weekend.

But the heavy crash - which he put down to having more power than expected from the battery exiting the final corner and then touching the white line as he ran a little wide - put paid to that in a very painful way.

“It's a very, very silly mistake,” he said. “Overly confident. Think it's my first crash of the year. It's annoying to happen from that position.”

Winner: Kimi Antonelli (4th)

This was a quintessential ‘when it’s your year, it’s your year’ kind of day for Kimi Antonelli.

He did nothing remarkable - which in itself is good because evidently these were conditions it was easy to trip up in - and yet took another little step towards his world championship.

His chief title ‘rival’ Russell crashed out of a winning position on the first lap. Then, at the very end, two cars ahead of him were removed by a needless collision.

Apart from keeping the car on the road this is the easiest progress Antonelli will make all season - and it almost ended in an unlikely sprint podium, such was Leclerc’s trouble by the end of the race.

Loser: McLaren (8th & 14th)

A frustrating but solid race turned into a needlessly destructive one for McLaren thanks to Lando Norris’s over-ambitious final lap move.

Sending it down the inside of Turn 5 in the wet is borderline desperate at the best of times, let alone against your team-mate.

McLaren chiefs must have been holding their breath when it happened but ultimately, while gutted, surely not surprised that it caused a synchronised pirouette from the pair, ending Oscar Piastri’s race in the process.

It was always likely to end badly and it could yet get worse if Norris cops a penalty for it that loses him eighth place, and with it the measly point McLaren still got as a weak silver lining.

Winner: Max Verstappen (1st)

Would Verstappen have had anything to come back at Russell with? We'll never know - though you could infer that Verstappen might've found it difficult considering his assertion post-race that "I think we shouldn't host a sprint where you can't pass".

That's all academic. Verstappen never looked under threat from behind, and his drive to victory had an air of cruise control to it - at a track, too, where Verstappen can struggle to reach his peak level of performance.

Yet more evidence that the four-time champion is the form driver right now.

Loser: Isack Hadjar (DNF)

It's hard to judge Hadjar too harshly considering he managed only two laps before parking up with a power issue.

But he did lose two places at the start, if we're being ultra-critical.

And of course, there's no escaping the fact this was a DNF in a race won by the sister car.

Winner: Lewis Hamilton (2nd)

Lewis Hamilton did the hard work for his sprint race in the opening few seconds, leaping forward past his team-mate and the two McLarens.

Considering he seemed to have the best pace of anyone besides Verstappen in this race, that was critical. Getting stuck on a track where it looked almost impossible to overtake in these conditions - barring bigger pace swings in the midfield - would have made Hamilton’s sprint look a lot more average.

He couldn't quite match Verstappen in the middle of the race but started to whittle away at the lead again late on and was much, much better managing his tyres than team-mate Leclerc seemed to be as the track dried.

Winner: Liam Lawson (5th)

If you can keep your head when all around you are losing theirs...

OK, the Singapore sprint wasn't the most difficult to navigate in reality, but there was still plenty of reward to be reaped from keeping it neat and tidy.

This was another exemplary drive from Lawson, who in repeating his best-of-the-rest trick from qualifying also stood to gain from any incidents up ahead. (Hello, McLaren.)

It's this sort of drive that means the direction of travel is only going one way in the fight for fifth in the constructors' championship between Racing Bulls and Alpine right now.

Loser: Arvid Lindblad (13th)

Compare Lawson's serene run to fifth with Racing Bulls team-mate Lindblad's travails.

Lindblad was perplexed after the race by his spin under the safety car - "it was a bit confusing at the time because it was pretty gentle on power, then just suddenly lost it" - but was a little loose in his description of events that "then I tried to just get it back round", as he in fact had spent multiple seconds driving the car backwards while trying to loop around at Turn 5.

No surprise then that that caught the attention of race control.

And even if he escapes penalty, this was a last-on-the-road finish in the same car that finished well up the road in fifth. There's no question, considering the attrition, that points were up for grabs.

Loser: Cadillac (DNF & DNF)

Two cars. Two collisions. One unproductive race.

The Sergio Perez-Lance Stroll clash looked like as clear a case of racing incident as you'll find, so there's little blame to be apportioned to the Cadillac driver there.

Valtteri Bottas doesn't get such an easy ride. What initially looked like a lazy slide from Alex Albon into the back of Gabriel Bortoleto was actually the result of Bottas getting into the back of the Williams. All this before the race had restarted, too.

The "rubber band" effect was partly to blame - Bottas said "the two cars ahead of me came to full stop and I just didn't have time to react" - but he did ultimately trigger contact.

So much for this being the sort of weekend, and track, that can play into Cadillac's hands...

Winner: Ollie Bearman (6th)

Ollie Bearman was absolutely thrilled with his work in the sprint, even though he acknowledged his seven-place rise was bolstered by others screwing up.

Irrespective of the Russell shunt and McLaren collision, though, Bearman was a man on the move here. He toughed it out nicely to get ahead of Pierre Gasly once the race resumed post-safety car, and that was critical for consolidating a points finish.

Bearman was on course to grab eighth irrespective of what happened on the final lap - so the bump up to sixth merely boosted the Haas driver rather than flattered his efforts completely.