Verstappen Converts Pole to Win Singapore Grand Prix as Hamilton's Gamble Backfires

Max Verstappen won the Singapore Grand Prix from pole position on Sunday, finishing 7.335 seconds clear of Charles Leclerc after one hour and 42 minutes of racing. Andrea Kimi Antonelli completed the podium for Mercedes despite a brake problem. The race will be remembered as much for Lewis Hamilton, who started third and finished sixth after a strategy call that Ferrari and its driver now see very differently.

It was Verstappen’s second win of 2026 and only the sixth grand prix this season not won by a Mercedes. It also reshuffled the scrap for second in the drivers’ championship, where five drivers are now separated by 37 points.

Verstappen’s control from the front at Marina Bay

Few circuits on the calendar reward the driver who leads from the front as generously as Singapore. The walls punish risk, the humidity punishes everyone, and overtaking is rare enough that pole is worth more here than almost anywhere else. Verstappen turned that pole into a win, and Leclerc never got close enough to attempt a move.

The Ferrari driver did set the fastest lap of the race, a 1:35.202, which suggests the SF-26 was not short of outright speed over a single lap. What it lacked was a way past. At Marina Bay a car that is a few tenths quicker can sit in the dirty air for 20 laps and achieve nothing beyond cooking its tyres, and the seven-second margin at the flag shows that Verstappen never had to defend in earnest.

Behind them the order settled into a procession that the grid largely predicted. Antonelli gained one place from fourth, Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri each moved up one from fifth and sixth, and all three of those gains came at Hamilton’s expense. The gaps were large: Antonelli finished 24.6 seconds off the lead, Norris 40.5 and Piastri 49.6. Only the top 10 finished on the lead lap, and Pierre Gasly was the first of the lapped runners in 11th.

Pos	Driver	Team	Grid
1	Max Verstappen	Red Bull	1
2	Charles Leclerc	Ferrari	2
3	Andrea Kimi Antonelli	Mercedes	4
4	Lando Norris	McLaren	5
5	Oscar Piastri	McLaren	6
6	Lewis Hamilton	Ferrari	3
7	Liam Lawson	RB F1 Team	8
8	Nico Hülkenberg	Audi	10
9	George Russell	Mercedes	19
10	Isack Hadjar	Red Bull	22

Four drivers failed to finish: Alexander Albon, Lance Stroll, Franco Colapinto and Gabriel Bortoleto. According to GPfans, the FIA has since explained some of the on-track disruption over the weekend, blaming it on a computer “pop-up window” issue. It was not the governing body’s most dignified moment of the season, but the transparency is welcome.

Hamilton’s stay-out call and the podium Ferrari lost

Hamilton held third on the road, a position worth 15 points and one that would have left him two points behind George Russell for second in the standings. He finished sixth instead, 53.188 seconds behind the winner and three and a half seconds behind Piastri, with eight points.

Fred Vasseur has said publicly that Hamilton refused to pit when the team wanted him to, GPfans reports, and Hamilton apologised to Ferrari after the race. On its own, that reads as a straightforward case of a driver overruling the pit wall and paying for it. PlanetF1’s analysis of the telemetry and team radio suggests the picture is more complicated, tracing the gamble back to a Ferrari problem that made staying out look more attractive from the cockpit than it did from the pit wall.

Both things can be true. A driver who can feel a car’s weakness may conclude that the conventional strategy will not work, and in Singapore, where track position is everything, the temptation to hold on to a podium place is strong. Yet the final gaps show what it cost. Hamilton lost three places to cars that had not been quick enough to pass him on track while his tyres were still usable. The strategy handed those places over; nobody won them from him in wheel-to-wheel racing.

The deeper problem for Ferrari is process. A team defending second place in the constructors’ championship cannot have its strategy settled by a disagreement on the radio. Whether the fault lies in how the call was communicated, in the information Hamilton was given or in the driver’s judgement, Ferrari left at least seven points on the table on a day when Leclerc extracted everything available.

Russell and Hadjar’s recoveries, and Lawson’s statement

The drives of the afternoon came from the back of the grid. Russell started 19th and finished ninth, gaining 10 places at a circuit where gaining one is an achievement. The two points barely dented his deficit to Antonelli, but they preserved a nine-point cushion over Hamilton in second place, and that margin could prove valuable over the final six rounds.

Isack Hadjar went further still, climbing from 22nd and last on the grid to 10th for Red Bull’s second points finish of the day. It was a mature drive from a driver who has had to absorb comparisons with Verstappen all season. A point from last on the grid in Singapore is a better day’s work than its value suggests.

Liam Lawson’s seventh place from eighth on the grid was perhaps the most consequential result outside the podium. PlanetF1 framed it as a statement drive with Racing Bulls weighing up its 2027 line-up, and the contrast with his team-mate was telling. Arvid Lindblad started ninth and finished 15th, a lap down. Lawson now has 75 points to Lindblad’s 38, and his six points on Sunday took RB F1 Team to 100, 32 clear of Alpine in fifth.

Nico Hülkenberg’s eighth place from 10th earned Audi four points and moved the team within seven points of Haas in the constructors’ standings. Haas brought both cars home, but Oliver Bearman and Esteban Ocon finished 12th and 13th, both lapped.

Gasly was the clearest disappointment among the midfield runners. He started seventh, in a car that had qualified well enough to score, and finished 11th, a lap down. With Colapinto retiring, Alpine left Singapore with nothing.

Antonelli’s brake scare and McLaren’s uneasy truce

Antonelli’s third place looks routine in the classification. It was far from it. PlanetF1 reports that he suffered brake trouble during the race, following issues before the start, and Mercedes has confirmed the cause. Few circuits are harder on brakes than Marina Bay, with its succession of heavy stops into tight corners and little straight-line running to cool the discs. Bringing a compromised car home on the podium, almost 16 seconds clear of Norris, was the drive of a championship leader managing risk rather than chasing glory.

It also showed how quickly the title picture could change. A brake failure at this track tends to end with a car in the barrier, not limping back to the pits. Mercedes will want the fix proven before Austin.

McLaren’s weekend was coloured by the sprint, in which Norris and Piastri collided. PlanetF1 reports that Norris has since revised his initial view of the incident. In the grand prix the pair finished fourth and fifth, nine seconds apart, with no repeat. Neither driver is realistically in the title fight any longer, so the team’s priority is now the battle for third in the constructors’ championship. With McLaren on 339 points and Red Bull on 332, a seven-point margin leaves no room for team-mates to take points off each other.

How Antonelli could clinch the title in Austin

Antonelli leaves Singapore on 340 points, 102 clear of Russell. Six rounds remain, and Sky Sports has set out how he could clinch the championship as early as the United States Grand Prix at the Circuit of the Americas on 25 October.

In broad terms, he would need to win in Austin with Russell finishing well down the order and Hamilton outside the top four. That is a narrow set of results, and Singapore showed how unpredictable they can be: Russell’s ninth place from 19th on the grid is exactly the kind of recovery that would deny Antonelli the title in Texas. A coronation in one of the rounds that follow is the more realistic prospect, but with a 102-point lead and eight wins already in the bank, the question is when, not whether.

The fight for second has become the more absorbing contest:

• Russell, 238 points
• Hamilton, 229 points
• Verstappen, 221 points
• Leclerc, 215 points
• Norris, 201 points

Verstappen’s win moved him to within eight points of Hamilton, and Leclerc’s 18 points kept him within reach of all three. Hamilton’s lost podium is the one that stings. Third place would have left him two points behind Russell.

In the constructors’ championship Mercedes has 578 points, 134 ahead of Ferrari. That gap cannot close by more than 43 points in a single grand prix, and Ferrari gained only nine on Sunday despite Mercedes’ troubles. Ferrari, on 444, is 105 points clear of McLaren. Red Bull outscored McLaren by 26 points to 22 in Singapore, which makes the contest for third the closest of the major team battles.

Austin offers a very different challenge, with longer straights, high-speed direction changes and genuine overtaking opportunities. That should suit a recovering Mercedes better than Marina Bay did, and it should make Verstappen’s task harder. If Antonelli wins in Texas, the championship will be his in all but name. Ferrari’s immediate priority is making sure its pit wall and its drivers agree on strategy, because another Singapore would put both Hamilton’s hopes of finishing runner-up and the team’s grip on second place at risk.