Scuderia Ferrari leaves Singapore with a good points haul, after both drivers finished on the podium. However, there is a feeling that the win might have been on the cards at Marina Bay. Charles Leclerc finished second and Carlos Sainz third at the end of an eventful race, the drivers and team delivering a performance that showed the F1-75 is very much on the pace.
The race. The race produced plenty of thrills with the result in the balance until just a handful of laps from the flag. The outcome was actually decided at the start, when Sergio Perez managed to get ahead of Charles, who after leading off the line got some wheelspin on the damp track. Carlos was excellent, getting past Lewis Hamilton at the first corner to go third. The race featured several Safety Car and Virtual periods, both real and virtual, each time after a driver crashed into the barriers or stopped on track. The team and Charles tried everything to get ahead, including being the first front runner to pit to make the switch from Intermediate to Medium tyres. However, the fact that the track was still damp off the racing line meant that overtaking was impossible. Shortly after Charles and Carlos had pitted, the race was neutralised one last time after Yuki Tsunoda crashed. At the restart, Leclerc set off in pursuit of Perez, pressuring the Mexican almost to the finish. But in the closing laps, Charles began to have some problems with the front tyres which saw him drop to seven seconds behind the leader (reduced to two after Perez received a five-second penalty). This was his eight podium of the season, made up of three wins plus two second places in this season’s Sprint races. As for Carlos, he managed to fend off first Lewis Hamilton and then Lando Norris, bringing home an important third place. It is his ninth podium of the season, which include a win at Silverstone and a third in the Sprint in Austria. He is now fifth in the Drivers’ standings, just one point adrift of George Russell.
Japan next. The World Championship stays in Asia and the teams now head immediately for Suzuka and the first Japanese Grand Prix since 2019.
Charles Leclerc #16
Our pace was really good today so it's a shame to finish second. We had some wheel spin at the start and didn't get away as well as Checo (Perez). That put us on the back foot. I pushed to put pressure on Checo but my front tyres got a bit too warm and he started pulling away.
As I've already said, I want to use these last races to improve our execution of races and I think that we made a step in the right direction today.
Carlos Sainz #55
It was quite a strange race for me to be honest. I had a good start and managed to get Lewis, but for some reason I struggled with pace in the first stint with the Intermediates and only towards the end of race did I manage to recover it. But by then it was already too late. We need to look into it because I’ve been quick all weekend and today I lost all feeling with the car.
On a positive note, we managed to do a race without mistakes in these tricky conditions, which was not easy today, bringing home a solid result with both cars on the podium. We’ll go at it again in Japan next week.
Mattia Binotto Team Principal & Managing Director
We are disappointed with the result of today’s race. It’s been quite a while that we have been chasing a win and today we came close. Having said that, we picked up a good number of points thanks to a second and a third place. Overall, it was a difficult weekend to manage, but the car worked well in both the wet and the dry.
Here in Singapore, Ferrari showed that it had got over the difficulties of Spa and Zandvoort and we were able to get our performance back on track, which bodes well for the coming races.