Formula 1

Verstappen breaks Singapore win drought while Hamilton nosedives

Jack Cozens

11 Oct 2026 — 3 min read

Max Verstappen claimed his first Singapore Grand Prix win as Ferrari squandered a double-podium by fumbling Lewis Hamilton's strategy.

Saturday's sprint race winner Verstappen had been the class of the field through the weekend and, having resisted Charles Leclerc off the line and through the opening laps, steadily increased his advantage - particularly around the timing of the first pitstops.

As Verstappen extended his first stint, attention instead turned to the Ferraris once both of them had pitted.

Leclerc retained position through these stops, but that took him onto the medium compound tyre - with Hamilton then in hot pursuit and on the faster soft tyre.

Hamilton complained over the team radio first of losing two seconds on one lap and then insisting "I need to use this speed, mate".

But Ferrari did not order a change of positions and Leclerc did eventually begin to eke out a gap until a virtual safety car on lap 39 of 62 afforded the leading cars a chance to stop.

Leclerc did take advantage of that by swapping onto a used set of soft tyres but Hamilton stayed out on his soft tyres, gaining track position but ending up at a 21-lap tyre-age disadvantage.

As Ferrari dithered over whether to pit Hamilton - with the seven-time champion asking whether he could extend onto Plan C, considered to be a one-stop strategy - its window to do so soon disappeared. Leclerc asked Ferrari not to lose time as he caught the sister car and Hamilton duly obliged, moving over at Turn 5 on lap 48.

Leclerc did halve the gap to Verstappen in the closing laps but still ended up 7.335s down at the flag, with Verstappen's biggest dramas late on being a failure of his driver-to-team radio and a wide moment out of the final corner.

Attention in the final laps therefore turned to how far down the order Hamilton would tumble.

By lap 54 he had Lando Norris and Kimi Antonelli on his tail, and at the start of the following lap Hamilton tried to stick it out around the outside of Norris into the first corner, taking to the run-off as a result and compromising the line of the McLaren, which also ran off-track.

That allowed Antonelli to sweep past Norris and before the end of the lap the world championship leader had also cleared Hamilton to claim third place, with Norris finally working his way past Hamilton at the Turn 10 left-hander the following lap.

Hamilton's slump was completed when Oscar Piastri - who'd suffered a slow-puncture in the final third of the race - passed him on the penultimate lap, with Hamilton apologising to Ferrari post-race for his request to stay out.

"Sorry boys I let you down today with that strategy. My call," he said.

Piastri was fifth, nine seconds behind team-mate Norris, who was asked to drive with caution in the final laps after McLaren spotted a potential sensor issue.

Liam Lawson drove another exemplary race to seventh for Racing Bulls, finishing 1.7s ahead of Audi's Nico Hulkenberg - who held the second Mercedes of George Russell off in the closing laps, Russell having started 19th.

Isack Hadjar was another driver on a recovery charge. From the back of the field - he was last in line of the three cars at the end of the pitlane at the start of the race - the Red Bull driver made it through to 10th, passing Alpine's seventh-place starter Pierre Gasly for the final point inside the final five laps.