Formula 1 does not yet have a world champion for this year: Max Verstappen does not manage the early coup in Singapore. In a race with six failures, Sebastian Vettel scores points. Mick Schumacher is unlucky again.
Max Verstappen grumbled, he pushed in Singapore’s tough traffic, made a bad brake – and after two frustratingly long hours he was certain: the title party has been postponed, the winning streak has broken, and the fireworks in the night sky only banged for his teammates. Sergio Perez won a boring Grand Prix in the city-state in front of the Ferrari duo Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz, the field spent large parts of the race behind the safety car.
After the last five victories at the end of a frustrating, rainy weekend, Verstappen was only seventh, the Red Bull star quarreled and grumbled a lot in Singapore – the prospects are still dazzling: next Sunday in Japan there will be the next opportunity then he can even get his second world title for the first time on his own.
In Singapore, on the other hand, he would have needed a win and very bad results from Perez and Leclerc, exactly the opposite happened. Leclerc (104) and Perez (106) reduced their gap to Verstappen, he now needs a win at Suzuka including a bonus point for the fastest lap for the title with four races to go. There are still 138 points up for grabs on the remaining five Grand Prix weekends.
Sebastian Vettel, still the record winner in Singapore with five victories, still scored points in the Aston Martin in eighth place in his last appearance in the night race. Mick Schumacher started in Singapore for the first time and was on the road for a long time. A collision with George Russell in the Mercedes through no fault of his own ultimately threw him back to 13th place. Schumacher is still waiting for a new contract with Haas.
For Verstappen, however, his birthday weekend had already started with a few mishaps. On Friday, his 25th day of honor, he missed a lot of training time because his team was tweaking the setup endlessly. On Saturday he was on course for the best time in qualifying on a drying track – but Red Bull had miscalculated: Verstappen ran out of gas on the last fast lap.
The Dutchman complained loudly and publicly that such a mistake was “unacceptable” and “crappy”. And on Sunday the next disaster followed. First from above and for everyone: heavy rain caused the start to be postponed by one hour. And then for Verstappen himself: He had already struggled with eighth place on the grid anyway, but he even completed the first laps outside the top 10. He fell back in the first few meters.
At the top, his team-mate Perez meanwhile took the lead, just ahead of the Ferrari duo Leclerc and Sainz. Further back, Vettel got off to a good start from 13th, was eighth for quite a while before Verstappen passed. Then the events became lengthy due to numerous minor accidents. The real safety car deployed twice, and the virtual safety car slowed down the race three times. Verstappen hardly made any progress in this phase, and at some point he apparently became impatient: he attacked Lando Norris in the McLaren with too much momentum, braked badly, shot into a run-off zone.
“I touched down completely,” he radioed into the pits and drove after the very decimated field for the time being. With fresh tires again, Verstappen at least made it into the points.
