Tag: Singapore Grand Prix

Carlos Sainz wins Singapore Grand Prix, ends Red Bull winning streak

Carlos Sainz took home the win after a drama-filled final sequence to end Max Verstappen’s dominant win streak.

Red Bull Racing had won every Formula 1 race in 2023 up to the Singapore Grand Prix, but by its end, that would be the case no longer.

Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz started on pole position for the race, and he’d take it home for a victory on Sunday for his second-ever Formula 1 win. He had to fight hard at the very end of the race to secure it, fending off McLaren’s Lando Norris and Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton to round out the podium.

The race started out with a safety car early when Williams’ Logan Sargeant crashed into a barrier, re-joining the race but leaving too much debris. Red Bull’s Max Verstappen had moved up to eighth place, but he stayed out on hard tires and ended up unable to fight with the top of the pack. He ended up finishing 5th, breaking his 11-race win streak.

Drama unfolded in the final laps when Sainz, Norris, Hamilton and Mercedes driver George Russell were all fighting for first place. On the final lap (Lap 62), Russell was in third and set to podium before he hit a barrier, rendering him unable to finish the race and causing him to slide all the way down to 16th place.

Here’s how the standings shook out in Marina Bay:

  1. Carlos Sainz (Ferrari)
  2. Lando Norris (McLaren)
  3. Lewis Hamilton (Mercedes)
  4. Charles Leclerc (Ferrari)
  5. Max Verstappen (Red Bull)
  6. Pierre Gasly (Alpine)
  7. Oscar Piastri (McLaren)
  8. Sergio Perez (Red Bull)
  9. Liam Lawson (AlphaTauri)
  10. Kevin Magnussen (Haas)
  11. Alexander Albon (Williams)
  12. Guanyu Zhou (Alfa Romeo)
  13. Nico Hulkenberg (Haas)
  14. Logan Sargeant (Williams)
  15. Fernando Alonso (Aston Martin)
  16. George Russell (Mercedes) [DNF]
  17. Valtteri Bottas (Alfa Romeo) [DNF]
  18. Esteban Ocon (Alpine) [DNF]
  19. Yuki Tsunoda (AlphaTauri) [DNF]

F1 Singapore Qualifying: Carlos Sainz on pole, Red Bull off pace

Red Bull Racing will have a lot of work to do if it means to continue its win streak Sunday.

Q1 was looking toward an exciting finish with multiple cars out after the checkered flag, but Aston Martin’s Lance Stroll had a bad shunt near the finish line that entirely totaled his car and red-flagged the session. As as result, AlphaTauri’s Yuki Tsunoda technically led Q1 and McLaren’s Oscar Piastri and both Alfa Romeo cars didn’t get a chance to improve their times, knocking them out of qualifying.

Q2 saw a shocking development, with both Red Bulls getting knocked out — Max Verstappen placed 11th and Sergio Perez placed 13th. Ferrari driver Carlos Sainz led the session, and Q2 also saw a great performance by AlphaTauri driver Liam Lawson when he qualified 10th and made in into Q3.

In the end, though, it was Sainz’s day. He qualified 1st to grab his second pole of the year, and it was almost a Ferrari 1-2 in Singapore for the first time since 2014, but Charles Leclerc was foiled by a late flyer from George Russell, who qualified second. Given the difficulty overtaking in Singapore, Red Bull’s win streak is perhaps more in danger on Sunday than it ever has been.

Here is how the final results shaped out:

  1. Carlos Sainz (Ferrari) [1:30.984]
  2. George Russell (Mercedes) [1:31.056]
  3. Charles Leclerc (Ferrari) [1:31.063]
  4. Lando Norris (McLaren) [1:31.270]
  5. Lewis Hamilton (Mercedes) [1:31.485]
  6. Kevin Magnussen (Haas) [1:31.575]
  7. Fernando Alonso (Aston Martin) [1:31.615]
  8. Esteban Ocon (Alpine) [1:31.673]
  9. Nico Hulkenberg (Haas) [1:31.808]
  10. Liam Lawson (AlphaTauri) [1:32.268]
  11. Max Verstappen (Red Bull) [1:32.173]
  12. Pierre Gasly (Alpine) [1:32.274]
  13. Sergio Perez (Red Bull) [1:32.310]
  14. Alexander Albon (Williams) [1:33.719]
  15. Yuki Tsunoda (AlphaTauri) [No time in Q2]
  16. Valtteri Bottas (Alfa Romeo) [1:32.809]
  17. Oscar Piastri (McLaren) [1:32.902]
  18. Logan Sargeant (Williams) [1:33.252]
  19. Zhou Guanyu (Alfa Romeo) [1:33.258]
  20. Lance Stroll (Aston Martin) [1:33.397]

New FIA regulations on front and back wings to be introduced at Singapore Grand Prix

The FIA will be cracking down on front and back wings during the Singapore Grand Prix weekend.

The Singapore Grand Prix held on the notorious Marina Bay Street Circuit has always been perhaps Formula 1’s most challenging race, but a new FIA directive may make it even tougher.

According to Motorsport.com, the FIA (Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile), the governing body of F1 and most other worldwide motorsports, is introducing a new technical directive to crack down on front and back wing flexibility. The directive is essentially tightening up rules on an already-existing directive on wing flexibility that was introduced last year.

To simplify matters, the directive aims to tackle teams skirting the rules by making the front and back wings more flexible than they should be, through the use of what the FIA refers to as “mechanisms.” The FIA has insinuated that such mechanisms could be hidden beneath rubber coverings on their car and could pass inspection from the FIA outside of the track but bend when more resistance is placed on the car during an actual race where conditions would be much more intense.

Motorsport.com spoke with the FIA’s single-seater race director Nikolas Tombazis on the kind of things the FIA will be looking for when it inspects F1 cars ahead of the Singapore GP:

“If under a carbon surface, we have levers that allow a deflection in one direction and not in another, we can consider this a mechanism. Another thing we have said in the past is that it’s not acceptable when a component has relative motion against an adjacent element, sliding in a different direction [from it].

What happened recently? Some teams have components adjacent to each other that have a fairly high movement but do not slide [in tandem] because these areas are covered with rubber material. We do not consider this acceptable and, for this reason, we have made a clarification.”

It is unknown exactly which teams — if any — this new technical directive may effect over the race weekend. While it’s unlikely to end the recent streak of Red Bull domiance, some teams may find themselves hunting for tenths should they come at odds with the new crack down during testing over the grand prix.

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