Norris takes dominant win as McLaren extend Constructor championship lead

Norris takes dominant win as McLaren extend Constructor championship lead: Analysis of the Singapore Grand Prix, brought to you by Bahrain International Circuit

F1 returned to Singapore for a back-to-back street race, after last weekend’s win for Piastri in Baku. McLaren were hoping to extend their lead at the top of the Championship, whilst Lando Norris was also looking to take a chunk out of the 58-point lead Max Verstappen had over him in the driver championship.

In qualifying, it was Norris who showed the speed of the McLaren which had been present all weekend, taking pole by 0.2 seconds, ahead of Max Verstappen who seemed to eke out every bit of performance from his still-struggling Red Bull. The Mercedes pair of Hamilton and Russell took the second row, ahead of Piastri who will have felt he should have been ahead of the Mercedes cars. The two Ferraris also had a disappointing qualifying, only managing ninth and tenth.

Norris’ pole was, without question, an impressive achievement, but as drivers will often remind themselves, there are no points for qualifying and it’s all about what happens on race day. Given that Norris had his championship rival right next to him on the front row, on a tight street circuit, the start would be critical. It’s now seven occasions where Norris has been on pole and failed to end the first lap in the lead, a fact that he will have been all too aware of.

As it happened, Norris got as a good a start as you could hope for as the lights went out, with Verstappen slotting in behind, followed by the two Mercedes and Piastri. It was expected to be a one stop race, with most starting on the medium tyre, running to around one third distance for the change to hard tyres.

As the race settled in, Norris was looking to create a reasonable gap to Verstappen in second and by lap 17 that had grown to over ten seconds. Hamilton was the first to stop of the front runners, as he was on the less durable soft tyres. Russell then came in on lap 28, then Verstappen on laps 30, followed by Norris on lap 31. There was drama, however on Norris’ in-lap as he had a lock-up and almost collected the barrier. He managed to brush the wall in the process and there was some concern he might have had front wing damage, although it was not deemed to have been enough damage to warrant a change of front wing.

Compared to others, Piastri and Leclerc ran much longer first stints, taking their stops on lap 38 and 39. Despite the different timed stops, it made little difference to the order, with Norris motoring up front, dominating by 20 seconds, followed by Russell, Hamilton, then Piastri. The two Ferraris had made some progress, with Sainz sixth, followed be Leclerc. With quite a large spread on tyre life amongst the front runners, those on later stops will have hoped younger tyres would help gain places towards the end. Indeed, with Piastri on much fresher tyres, he made short work of Hamilton after his stop and swiftly went after Russell. Sainz was asked to let Leclerc past, given he was on much fresher tyres and, a few laps later, that decision was rewarded as Leclerc overtook Hamilton for fifth place. Piastri, in turn, again showed the tyre advantage and made light work of overtaking Russell to claim third.