Proceedings in Singapore were not quite as compelling compared to those in Azerbaijan a week ago. There was no battle for the lead, nor was there a real three-team battle at the front; instead, this was a championship big-picture race.
Lando Norris put the field to the sword, but Max Verstappen gamely mitigated the damage to his championship lead - and then said little about it afterwards as he staged an almost-silent protest during the official press conferences.
PRIME: How Norris shrugged off two touches with the wall to dominate in Singapore
But wait, there's more! Red Bull's presence on the podium came after a Friday night turnaround in fortunes thanks to Sebastien Buemi's stint in the simulator, while Ferrari's early pace seemed to descend significantly after the opening pair of practice sessions.
McLaren's 'mini-DRS' story reached its crescendo, Mercedes struggled in the heat, and it also looked as though Daniel Ricciardo had completed his farewell tour to 18th (albeit with the fastest lap) as RB looks set to reinstate Liam Lawson to the seat.
Here are the key stories we picked up on during the Singapore Grand Prix weekend.
1. Norris’ mission ‘is still on’ after Verstappen-esque rout (Jake Boxall-Legge)
A 20-second gap between first and second by the 25th lap rather evokes memories of most given races in 2023, when Verstappen happily cruised into the distance and built a variety of unassailable leads. Or Lewis Hamilton in the late 2010s. Or Michael Schumacher in the early 2000s.
Norris can do it too. The McLaren MCL38 had a very distinct pace advantage in Singapore, as team principal Andrea Stella reckoned that “in this [higher-downforce] configuration, I think it has the better aerodynamic efficiency across the grid”, but Norris still needed to make the most of the tools at his disposal. And, unlike his other pole position conversions of late, Norris nailed the start and held the lead into the first corner. He then kept it on lap one, and disappeared into the aether.
Race engineer Will Joseph asked Norris to build a five-second lead by “the mid-teens", and the Briton over-delivered in managing that by the end of lap 10. Five laps later, his advantage had doubled. There was scarcely anything that Verstappen could really do to stop himself from being on the receiving end of his usual party trick.
Of course, there were two moments with the wall that could have stifled Norris’ snowball on another day, but he managed to shake them off quite quickly rather than retreat within himself at the merest hint of contact.
To win the title, Norris “simply” needs to pull six more of those out of the bag, maximise his points advantage to Verstappen, and try to win all three sprint races. How hard can that be?
2. Ferrari promised a challenge before qualifying disaster (Jake Boxall-Legge)
Charles Leclerc was quickest in FP1, and under a hundredth slower than Norris in FP2. The long-run pace in that second session suggested that Ferrari might be onto something good once more, a week after Leclerc netted pole and challenged Oscar Piastri for victory in Azerbaijan. The early indications were that Leclerc might be Norris’ greatest challenger in Singapore.
But Ferrari’s pace seemed to evaporate under the heat of FP3. The team had partly anticipated this, expecting things to progress once more in qualifying; indeed, Leclerc was at the sharp end by the close of Q2, even if Red Bull had advanced in the order overnight.
Then came the turning point: Carlos Sainz lit up the rears as he prepared to open his first attempt at a hot lap in Q3, earning a one-way ticket into the Turn 17/18 barrier. This nixed Leclerc’s opening run, and the Monegasque’s subsequent effort after the red flag had disappeared opened while his tyres were too cold and went too deep onto the Turn 1 kerb.
His final time was only good enough for seventh, 0.004s shy of Nico Hulkenberg, but it was chalked off for track limits. Thus, Leclerc and Sainz were largely out of position on the fifth row of the grid, which rather constricted their efforts throughout the rest of the grand prix.
3. Why Max went mute in FIA press conferences (Jake Boxall-Legge)
Here’s a potted history of why Verstappen suddenly adopted a somewhat laconic approach to the FIA press conference on Saturday and Sunday. In the Thursday presser, Verstappen dropped an F-bomb. Per a recent directive in the FIA, swearing was going to be punished more harshly, and thus Verstappen was given the equivalent of community service.
The Dutchman believed that this was, in his words, “silly”. As such, he made a point of providing only curt answers to questions while sat on the press conference sofa. It was reminiscent of Marshawn Lynch’s 2015 Super Bowl media session, where he simply uttered the phrase “I’m just here so I don’t get fined”. “I know that I have to answer,” said Verstappen, in explanation of his malicious compliance. “But it doesn't say how long you have to answer for.”
And Verstappen was genuinely aggrieved that the FIA had punished him so harshly for swearing, feeling that he had helped the governing body in the past voluntarily with other projects and that he was being singled out. To his credit, he was happy to field the media’s questions outside of the press conference room, where he spoke of his displeasure.
“I mean, these kinds of things definitely decide my future as well,” he admitted. “When you can't be yourself, you have to deal with these kinds of silly things...I think now, I'm at a stage of my career that I don't want to be dealing with this all the time. It's really tiring.”
In other Red Bull news, the team enjoyed a significant turnaround after a difficult Friday; overnight set-up work on the simulator got the team into a much better window with the tyres and Verstappen reported much better balance through the plethora of lower-speed corners at the track. It didn't entirely work out on Sergio Perez's side of the garage, but it's been known for some time that the Mexican is much more sensitive to the RB20's flaws.
4. McLaren’s ‘mini-DRS’ gets shut down (Jake Boxall-Legge)
The upper rear wing element on the McLaren MCL38 had tongues wagging after the Baku race, as onboard footage of Oscar Piastri’s car showed the bottom corners of the wing creaking open very slightly on the 2.2-kilometre (1.37 mile) stretch along Neftchilar Avenue.
A little insight into how this works: the upper and lower elements are separated by what is known as a “slot gap”, which has a defined size. The slot gap breaks the wing up into two elements, allowing airflow to stay attached to a greater curvature and minimises the interruption to the amount of downforce created.
But on a long straight, you really don’t need that downforce. And, relative to the size of the long seafront stretch of road, the DRS zone is comparatively small. If the slot gap is opened slightly more, then the wing starts to stall; it no longer stays attached to the underside of the upper element, cutting the downforce and by association, the drag. It passed all static flex tests, but McLaren developed it to open at a given speed to dump more drag and push the acceleration up. This certainly helped Piastri keep ahead of Leclerc during the Azerbaijan race.
There were no formal protests against the wing design, but McLaren was told by the FIA to modify it so that it did not open up without DRS applied. This was not a feature of the higher-downforce Singapore wing, but it may prompt a change for races like Las Vegas – which features a comparatively long straight.
5. Mercedes' "painful evening" with a hot Singapore circuit (James Newbold)
The chirpy comments from Mercedes drivers on Saturday night about "night and day" set-up improvements that allowed Lewis Hamilton and George Russell to annex row two cut a sharp contrast to Sunday. Neither of the drivers were in a fit state to conduct usual post-race media engagements due to heat exhaustion after slipping to fourth and sixth place finishes.
After being usurped by Oscar Piastri, Russell complained over the radio of suffering from understeer and oversteer, but did at least keep Charles Leclerc at bay. Hamilton was forced into an early stop for hard tyres to ditch the softs he'd started with and couldn't repel the Ferrari on his much older rubber, the four-time Singapore winner's early predictions that "you're killing me with this offset" proving well-founded.
Team boss Toto Wolff accepted that picking softs, which did not allow Hamilton to vault ahead of Max Verstappen off the line as had been hoped, "was the wrong decision" but was frank in his assessment that it proved academic.
"It doesn’t hide away from the fact that the car is too slow," he said, having labelled Sunday "a really painful evening".
"We struggle at the moment at tracks that are hot and are tough on traction; here and Baku," Wolff explained. "But this is no excuse. It is just at the moment not what we expect from ourselves, because if your quickest car is a minute behind the leader it is just difficult to accept."
6. Ricciardo's time looks over as he admits "this could be it" (Ewan Gale)
Rumours swirled ahead of the weekend that Daniel Ricciardo would be entering his final event as an F1 driver, with RB set to promote Liam Lawson for the United States Grand Prix onwards.
The Australian failed to make it through Q1 despite promising practice pace and, after struggling to make headway having started on softs in the grand prix, his team pitted him at the end of the race to set a fastest lap.
Speaking afterward, he told media that it wasn't a "fairytale ending", the closest he came to confirming he would be bowing out of the championship. But in truth, other than the 2021 Italian Grand Prix victory with McLaren, there has been nothing fairytale-like about his time on the grid since switching from Red Bull to Renault for 2019.
His second chance having initially been dropped for 2023 was almost squandered before it began when he broke a bone in his hand at Zandvoort last year and despite glimpses of a return to form, he hasn't kicked on sufficiently to warrant a continuation. No doubt his personality will be missed but, if this is the end of the road, there can't be much to argue about.
7. Rookie race looks set to be on (Ewan Gale)
One of the most complained about issues in F1 at the moment is how to provide rookies and young drivers with experience in current cars, given the lack of testing compared to yesteryear.
To its credit, the championship has been proactive in trying to open doors for such opportunities - TPCs [Testing of Previous Cars] and the FP1 rookie sessions allowing F1 teams to put new blood behind the wheel for vital run time.
Other ideas have come and gone, such as wildcard entries - which are employed by the F1 Academy series with the same goal in mind - but the idea of giving rookies a race to compete in at the Abu Dhabi post-season test, rather than ambling around for kilometre after kilometre was floated by team bosses earlier this year and Autosport understands that the proposal will be green lit for the end of the year.
While Pirelli's tyre testing will still take up much of the day's focus, it is understood that the plan would be to hold a short qualifying session before the sprint - though finer details are yet to be finalised.
How much help this will give young drivers will only be seen when it actually happens, but the thought process, at least, is sound.
