"It's Real Sweat"

A recap of the 2024 Singapore Grand Prix

Photo by Guo Xin Goh on Unsplash

If anyone tries to tell you racing cars is easy, I suggest you tell them about the Singapore Grand Prix.

Formula One’s original night race is widely considered to be the most physically demanding race on the calendar. Not only is the Marina Bay Street Circuit a difficult track, with its tight, twisty nature leaving little room for error, but the conditions under which the race is held are absolutely brutal. Average ambient temperatures hover around 35-40 degrees Celsius (95-104 degrees Fahrenheit), and humidity is often close to 90%. In the cockpit, the temperature can reach as high as 60 degrees Celsius (140 degrees Fahrenheit). The result: drivers can lose up to 4 kg (8.82 lb) of their body weight via sweat alone over the course of the race.

You could say that Singapore is a sauna. But you don’t have to drive a car at 300 km/h (~186 mph) in a sauna. A pressure cooker, then, might be a more appropriate comparison. And the pressure does indeed get to the drivers here. Azerbaijan, with its 74% Safety Car probability, deserves its reputation as a harbinger of chaos. But Singapore makes Baku blush: heading into this year’s race, the Safety Car had made at least one appearance at every single edition of the Singapore Grand Prix (the average was actually 1.71 per race). From 2016-2018, the Safety Car made an appearance on the very first lap of the race.

When I said at the end of last week’s race recap to expect fireworks in Singapore, I meant it. Unfortunately, if you did tune in to the race on that basis, you would have instead witnessed the very first Singapore Grand Prix in history not to feature the Safety Car or even a yellow flag. I apologize for jinxing.

McLaren win the latest team battle, but lose the latest individual battle.

Lando Norris: 1st (Qualified 1st)

Oscar Piastri 3rd (Qualified 5th)

The renaissance continues: a week after seizing the Constructors’ Championship lead for the first time in a decade, McLaren have won back-to-back races for the first time since 2012.

This victory echoed the dominance McLaren and Norris showed in Zandvoort, but there are a few key differences that underpin just how much more commanding they were in this win. For one, Norris lead every lap of the race. More astonishing, though, was how he went about building his eventual margin of victory. On Lap 9, with Norris leading Max Verstappen by just under 3 seconds, McLaren asked him to try and create a gap of 5 seconds by the around Lap 15-16 in order to cover Red Bull potentially pitting Verstappen first and undercutting him. Norris not only cleared the 5 second target by Lap 11, he was 10 seconds up by Lap 16. By Lap 26, the gap had widened to 20 seconds. Fast forward to Lap 55, and Norris had the gap at over 29 seconds, meaning he could have gone in the pits an extra time and still come back out ahead of Verstappen—no easy feat, given cars spend approximately 28 seconds on average in the pits at Singapore due to the pit lane speed limit being 60 km/h (~37.28 mph) as opposed to the usual 80 km/h (49.71 mph). At this point, McLaren radioed Norris and literally instructed him to “Just chill out, bring this car home,” which was why the winning margin ended up being *only* 20.945 seconds. Want more proof of how incredible Norris was? He lapped Fernando Alonso, who finished the race in eighth place.

Yet despite how undeniably remarkable Norris was and how much McLaren may have basked in the immediate afterglow of their first double podium in Singapore, the fact is the race was a slightly mixed bag for them when you examine the long-term outlook. On one hand, McLaren more than doubled their lead in the Constructors’ Championship to 41 points. On the other hand, Verstappen finishing runner-up and Daniel Ricciardo stealing the fastest lap of the race from Norris (more about this in the RB section of the recap) mean that Norris would still lose the Drivers’ Championship by one point to Verstappen if both finish first and second respectively across the remaining sprint races and grands prix, regardless of fastest lap bonus points.

Part of this is down (once again) to McLaren’s own strategic error. They decided to go for a large tire delta with Piastri in the hope that he could chase Verstappen down in the final stages of the race with much fresher tires. However, they waited too long. Pitting Piastri on Lap 38 meant that not only had his pace dropped off enough for Verstappen to almost catch him before he entered the pits, but it left too large a gap once he left the pits. Had the team called him in on Lap 31 or 32 chances are he would’ve came out in clean air with a gap of about 5 seconds to Verstappen. Instead, Piastri ended up with a gap of almost 20 seconds after the pitstop and needed six laps to pass the two Mercedes cars he found himself stuck behind before he could finally try and catch Verstappen, at which point the mission had well and truly entered impossible range. Perhaps McLaren believed they could make a large tire delta work because Norris’s pace convinced them Piastri could pull off a similar result. But at the end of the day, no matter how fast your car is, a 5-second gap and clean air is always preferable to a 20-second gap and dirty air, regardless of how much younger your tires might be.

McLaren will argue the Drivers’ Championship is still on, and they’re not wrong. A 52-point gap is erasable. However, they came into Singapore hoping to take out a huge chunk of Verstappen’s lead and left having only closed the gap by 7 points, which is still below the 8 they need to average from Monza through the last race of the season in Abu Dhabi. Not only that, they’re now at the stage where Norris needs outside help in order to win the title. The optimistic outlook would be that in a season as competitive as this one it would be foolish to think Verstappen will finish second every race, and some pundits said just as much after the race. But the argument goes both ways: in a season as competitive as this one it would be equally foolish to think Norris will win every race.

Red Bull win the latest individual battle, but lose the latest team battle.

Max Verstappen: 2nd (Qualified 2nd)

Sergio Perez: 10th (Qualified 13th)

Heading into Singapore the goal for Red Bull and Verstappen was clear: damage control. They left Singapore with mixed results.

Let’s get the obvious out of the way: Red Bull were not the fastest car in Singapore. They were also not even the second fastest car in Singapore. You could even argue with where Mercedes qualified and finished Red Bull weren’t even the third fastest car. And yet Verstappen still left the race very much the frontrunner for the individual title because he was able to make his car perform beyond the sum of its parts while under pressure. If he does end up holding on for the drivers’ title, Singapore should be considered one of his season’s defining moments.

But while Verstappen simmered along in the pressure cooker of Singapore and came out of it with a lovely result, the same can’t be said for his teammate. A week after he fought for a race win in Baku, normal service seemed to resume for Perez, as an exit in the second round of qualifying left him stuck in the middle of the field the entire race. As a result, Red Bull left Singapore with 19 points in the Constructors’ Championship to McLaren’s 40. If this was damage control, it went over about as well as using water to extinguish a grease fire. The upgrades the team are bringing to Austin next month can’t come fast enough, not just because Verstappen desperately needs a more competitive car to hold off Norris, but also because Red Bull desperately need a more competitive car to lift Perez up enough for him to help them catch McLaren.

Mercedes once again fail to control their own destiny.

George Russell: 4th (Qualified 4th)

Lewis Hamilton: 6th (Qualified 3rd)

I pointed out last week after Azerbaijan that Mercedes were more bound to circumstance than in control of their own destiny. That was on display again in Singapore. Sure, locking out the second row may seem like an impressive qualifying result, but it was accomplished largely because their main rivals floundered in myriad ways (see Perez for Red Bull above and Ferrari below). And much like in Baku, when Mercedes did try and take matters into their own hands, they did so in a way that was both questionable and ultimately unsurprisingly unsuccessful.

Starting Hamilton on soft tires was an absolutely wild decision, one that Mercedes Technical Director James Allison rightfully admitted afterwards was “a mistake.” Yet his reasoning for why the team thought the soft tires would work was based on questionable logic that should have never been allowed to fly in the first place. Mercedes went wrong in that they underestimated the race pace at the start and overestimated the durability of the soft tires. Those two factors go hand-in-hand, so it’s unsurprising that misjudging the first factor immediately throws the second one off.

So how could Mercedes have miscalculated? It’s entirely possible they overweighed the impact of a Safety Car, as the previous fourteen editions of the Singapore Grand Prix saw eight Safety Car deployments within the first 15 laps. Even if they correctly accounted for the presence of a Safety Car, it’s entirely possible they didn’t properly account for the track changes that have happened the past two races. The elimination of the original Turn 16-19 complex in 2023 in favor of a straight and the addition of a fourth DRS zone in that same area this year to improve overtaking meant general race pace not only picked up, but also gave the leading cars more incentive to try and pull away at the beginning in order to make sure the car behind them wasn’t in DRS range. Any one of these factors (or both), combined with the high temperatures in Singapore lending itself to faster tire degradation, meant the soft tires were clearly never going to be the correct tire to start on in the first place.

Mercedes might be forgiven for making such a basic error if other teams fell for the same trap. Except almost no one else did: Hamilton’s Mercedes was one of only two cars (the other being Daniel Ricciardo’s RB, which started down in 16th) that started the race on soft tires. The team, then, only have themselves to blame for how Hamilton’s race turned out. An early pit stop on Lap 17 meant he was released into traffic and stuck behind slower cars through the middle of the race, and once he cleared those cars his tires didn’t have enough life in them to help him fend off faster cars such as Piastri’s McLaren and Charles Leclerc’s Ferrari. It was an outcome that played out to no one’s surprise. Except Mercedes, of course.

Ferrari’s solid Sunday can’t surpass a sordid Saturday.

Charles Leclerc: 5th (Qualified 9th)

Carlos Sainz: 7th (Qualified 10th)

Ferrari’s race was decided on Saturday. Sainz spun out at the last corner in the final round of qualifying, and the only time Leclerc could get in the subsequently truncated session was deleted because he exceeded track limits at Turn 2. Given the difficulty of overtaking at Singapore, the best the team hoped for heading into Sunday’s race was a P6-P7 finish.

By that barometer, you would view Ferrari’s P5-P7 result on Sunday as a success. There were certainly successful moments; bringing Sainz into the pits after a slow start for the undercut on Lap 13 was a great move. Singapore’s main track characteristics—high tire degradation and few overtaking opportunities—made the undercut particularly effective here. The strategy paid off, as Sainz successfully worked his way back up the grid. At the same time, while Leclerc’s P5 finish was also impressive on a surface level, it only underscored just how much qualifying had hurt Ferrari. Singapore’s tight, twisty nature meant Leclerc’s progress up the field was largely hampered by his inability to pass Nico Hulkenberg’s Haas and Fernando Alonso’s Aston Martin (he spent half the race stuck behind either one or both those cars) despite the Ferrari clearly being the superior car. The pace he showed once Ferrari switched him onto hard tires on Lap 36 and he was clear of both the Haas and the Aston Martin only served as another reminder that Ferrari very well could have been fighting for a win in Singapore instead of being at the top of the also-rans.

Not fighting for a win when they very well could’ve (and probably should’ve) will be why Singapore was ultimately a disappointment for Ferrari. This was a clear-cut chance for them to further elbow their way into the Constructors’ Championship conversation, and they came into the race as one of the favorites along with McLaren because this was the type of circuit that has suited their car’s performance so far this season. Not taking full advantage of this opportunity, then, will hurt. That’s not because Ferrari are guaranteed to regress once Austin comes around—the entire field will undergo a mini-reset of sorts as teams bring new upgrades. Rather, it’s because they have more question marks surrounding their car heading into the final part of the season. The remaining races are almost exclusively at more “traditional” tracks (so not a serpentine beast like Singapore, or a “Temple of Speed” like Monza, or the Frankenstein’s monster that is Baku). And unlike their main rivals, Ferrari’s most recent baseline for how their car performs at more “cookie-cutter” circuits was largely weighed down by the downgrades they briefly installed from Spain to Silverstone, meaning they likely have less accurate data on how their car performs in race conditions. Sure, you could argue they’ll still have plenty of data from the simulator and tests. But the simulations and tests also suggested the downgrades in Spain would be upgrades. And while Spain was early enough in the season for Ferrari to correct course, any grave miscalculation now will all but end any hopes of a championship.

Fernando Alonso’s wizardry works wonders again for Aston Martin.

Fernando Alonso: 8th (Qualified 7th)

Lance Stroll: 14th (Qualified 17th)

Alonso is still working wonders at 43 years old. A week after an impressive P6 place finish at Baku, the veteran—he made his Formula One debut in 2001, when Piastri was literally still in the womb and a Sr. and Sra. Colapinto in Argentina were two years away from learning they’d be welcoming a son named Franco—brought out his entire bag of tricks to finish P8 in Singapore. Only losing one place during Sunday’s race was extremely impressive, and though the team deserve some credit for thinking on their feet and pitting him on Lap 25 to undercut Hulkenberg’s Haas, the fact is almost all the credit has to go to Alonso. As he told the media post-race, “So, normally it’s ninth and 10th available. Today finishing eighth is better than our best dreams…I think we should be 15th or 16th. We are eighth, two seconds behind the Ferrari, so I don’t know if I can do more.”

His comments will certainly make his teammate feel better. Stroll’s 14th place finish certainly looks embarrassing when compared to Alonso. But if the reality is Alonso’s pace this past week was the mirage and Stroll’s pace was the true reflection, then Aston Martin only have themselves to blame for so far failing to keep the car competitive as the season has progressed. Having said that, Stroll isn’t out of the woods just yet. Alonso has been the one doing all the heavy lifting, and Stroll’s inability to help the team maximize their car’s potential—both when the car has been poor (like this season) and when the car has been decent (like the start of 2023)—will continue to haunt him until he steps up.

Haas continue to impress.

Nico Hulkenberg: 9th (Qualified 6th)

Kevin Magnussen: 19th (Qualified 14th)

Of all the mid-tier teams, Haas has been the one that has impressed me the most this season. It’s incredible that the team, no stranger to being absolutely uncompetitive, have managed to field a consistently competitive car. Singapore marked the tenth time this season a Haas car finished in the points, as well as the eighth different grand prix where they have scored points. This race was yet another example of Haas maximizing their car’s potential and the luck of the draw: Ferrari’s poor qualifying allowed Hulkenberg to qualify an impressive 6th. While it was clear to everyone he wouldn’t stay there barring extraordinary circumstances, the great defensive drive he put in Sunday meant Haas left with two more valuable points in the vault. Considering the Sisyphean task Haas face by being a smaller customer team with comparatively limited resources, you could even say their performance this season has been far more impressive than some better-funded teams who are above them in the team championship (looking at you, Aston Martin).

Speaking of the Constructors’ Championship, Hulkenberg’s points finish means the gap between Haas and RB is now down to just three points in the fight for 6th place. The boulder, then, continues to roll upwards for now.

A poor race for Williams shouldn’t cloud the team’s outlook for the rest of the season.

Franco Colapinto: 11th (Qualified 12th)

Alex Albon: DNF (Qualified 11th)

Singapore will not have gone the way Williams hoped. The team came oh so close to having a car in the third round of qualifying, as Albon was just 0.024 of a second away from knocking Alonso out in the second round. Sunday’s race didn’t offer much consolation in terms of results. Albon had to retire on Lap 15 due to the car overheating, while another valiant drive from Colapinto wasn’t enough to get the team into the points.

Yet Williams would do well to keep their head up after Singapore. The pace they showed was further proof that their car is now competitive, and I would expect it to remain so for the rest of the season. Even more reassuring for the team is they now have a second driver in Colapinto who can keep them in the running for points when things go wrong for Albon. Furthermore, Colapinto will also be able to properly push Albon, something Williams were desperately lacking when Logan Sargeant was behind the wheel. After out-qualifying Albon in Azerbaijan, Colapinto came close to doing so again in Singapore: he was only seven thousandths of a second behind.

RB botch the Daniel Ricciardo send-off.

Yuki Tsunoda: 12th (Qualified 8th)

Daniel Ricciardo: 18th (Qualified 16th)

After months of disappointing results, RB finally saw a glimmer of form in Singapore. Tsunoda’s 8th place result in qualifying marked the first time an RB has made the final round of qualifying since Hungary five races ago. However, RB proceeded to do nothing with it. If you thought Mercedes’ tire strategy was seriously flawed, RB’s tire strategy for both their cars was downright unseriously abysmal. Tsunoda had a bad start that saw him immediately drop out of the points, and when he came into the pits on Lap 33 the team proceeded to switch him onto soft tires for the remaining 28 laps of the race. If other teams were having their drivers do a similar number of laps on this high-degradation track with medium tires, what on Earth made RB think Tsunoda would be able to effectively run softs for just as long? As for Ricciardo, the team started him on softs, which resulted in them bringing him into the pits on Lap 10. If that wasn’t bad enough, they switched him onto mediums, which necessitated another completely unnecessary journey on Lap 46 into one of the most time-consuming pit lanes of the entire calendar. With Ricciardo’s race well and truly shot, RB pitted him again (yes, you read that correctly) on Lap 58 so that he could set the fastest lap of the race. While doing so didn’t score Ricciardo and the team any points (you only receive a bonus point for the fastest lap in you finish within the top 10), it did constitute the best possible send-off RB could muster for him.

Which brings us to the main story surrounding RB: Ricciardo will officially be replaced by Liam Lawson for the remainder of the 2024 season. It’s not the exit many hoped to see for one of the most endearing and popular figures on the grid. While I will defend RB’s decision to replace him midseason rather than wait until the end of the year, there’s no question they still botched the entire situation. For one, the team announced the decision the Thursday after the race, which only made them seem like they were playing catch-up on the news cycle given everyone (Ricciardo himself included) went about last weekend behaving as if it was his last race in all but name only. The delay in the official announcement allowed various other stories to dominate the news cycle. These ranged from Team Principal Laurent Meckies admitting they put too much pressure on Ricciardo to perform to reports that RB only informed Ricciardo he was sacked the day before the race. The rumor mill even got in on the action, going haywire and suggesting Perez will retire at the end of this season and Red Bull will bring Ricciardo on as his replacement.

This entire media firestorm and the botched announcement are unfortunate. Newer Formula One fans may know Ricciardo as a “vibes” guy—and that’s entirely valid. Even the most basic search on the internet will reveal plenty of hilarious moments involving him (may “It’s real sweat” and this legendary press conference moment that I won’t spoil for you live eternally in Formula One lore). However, older fans of Formula One (or newer fans who appreciate a deep dive into the sport’s history!) will also remember Ricciardo as a brilliant driver who many believed at one point could be a world champion. While that potential was never fully realized—his move away from Red Bull to Renault (now Alpine) in 2019 was one of the biggest career missteps Formula One has seen—he still leaves a mark on the sport. Eight wins (including one at Monaco), 32 podiums, two third-place finishes in the Drivers’ Championship, and 14 seasons is no easy feat in a world as unforgiving as Formula One. Combined with how much Ricciardo’s affability and personal popularity helped increase the visibility of the sport, and it’s clear he can be proud of what he’s accomplished. He deserved a proper send-off to cap his career, and it’s a shame RB couldn’t even offer him that.

Alpine don’t need to bother looking back on Singapore, because there was nothing worth looking back on.

Esteban Ocon: 13th (Qualified 15th)

Pierre Gasly: 17th (Qualified 18th)

I know I said after Azerbaijan not to expect much from Alpine in Singapore. Yet it is genuinely tragic for them that, on a weekend in which almost every other team had at least one positive takeaway, they still managed none. The diverging paths of Williams and Alpine post-summer break only shows just how far back Alpine are right now. While both occupied the “competitive only in case of a miracle” tier of the grid during the first half of the season, Williams have now fully left Alpine behind: they’ve outscored Alpine 12-2 since the summer break.

Of course, it could be worse. Lest we forget…

Yes, Sauber still exist.

Zhou Guanyu: 15th (Qualified 20th)

Valterri Bottas: 16th (Qualified 19th)

No, they still haven’t scored any points this season.

Miscellaneous Musings:

• There might not be any Formula One the next few weeks, but the motorsports world continues to turn. Check back tomorrow for a very exciting Omakase Formula post podcast episode!