Introduction
Lando Norris converted pole position into victory with a charging drive during the 2024 Formula 1 Singapore Grand Prix, finishing 20 seconds clear of Max Verstappen and reducing the championship leader’s points advantage once more.
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Norris banished the memories of previous poor starts from the front of the grid to slot ahead of Verstappen at Turn 1 and control the opening laps before romping clear and spending most of the encounter in a league of his own – a couple of brushes with the walls aside.
With no answer to Norris’s raw pace, Verstappen had to settle for a distant second position, while Oscar Piastri’s rise from fifth to third – and a lowly points finish for Sergio Perez – means McLaren move further ahead of Red Bull in the constructors’ standings.
Piastri stayed out longer than anyone else in the first stint and charged his way past Mercedes pair Lewis Hamilton and George Russell with fresher tyres, something Charles Leclerc – as another late stopper – tried to repeat across the closing laps.
Leclerc overtook Hamilton with relative ease but could not quite do the same to Russell before the chequered flag dropped, leaving the Ferrari man in a Silver Arrows sandwich – teammate Carlos Sainz recovering from his qualifying crash to take seventh.
Fernando Alonso added some more points to Aston Martin’s tally in eighth, with Nico Hulkenberg giving Haas something to celebrate in ninth, as the aforementioned Perez – having been knocked out in the second qualifying phase – completed the top 10 places.
Franco Colapinto added to his impressive drives in Italy and Azerbaijan en route to P11, just a couple of seconds away from Perez and a points reward, followed by the lead RB and Alpine cars of Yuki Tsunoda and Esteban Ocon and the second Aston Martin machine of Lance Stroll.
Kick Sauber drivers Zhou Guanyu and Valtteri Bottas crossed the line in 15th and 16th, respectively, taking advantage of a difficult race for Pierre Gasly in the other Alpine and a three-stop affair for RB’s Daniel Ricciardo, who set the fastest lap after a late move to soft tyres.
Alex Albon lost a hatful of positions at the start when he felt he was forced wide by Williams teammate Colapinto and later retired due to an overheating car, with the Haas of Kevin Magnussen joining him on the DNF list at the end of the race after picking up a puncture.
Norris punched the air in delight as the podium finishers pulled up in parc ferme, having cut Verstappen’s title lead from 59 points to 52. McLaren, meanwhile, depart Singapore with an increased 41-point advantage over Red Bull in the constructors’.
Mario Isola, Motorsport Director, Pirelli:
All in all, this was a relatively straightforward race, without a single neutralisation, the first time that this race has happened in history. The one-stop proved to be definitely the quickest, and all three compounds behaved as expected. The Medium and the Hard clearly saw the most use, but the Soft also proved its worth, as could be seen, for example, in the times set by Hamilton on full fuel load in his first 17-lap stint or with Tsunoda over 28 laps in the second part of the race, with a perfectly acceptable level of degradation.
The role of pace management and traffic must be balanced when evaluating tyre performance. These factors significantly influenced the race, particularly with the Medium compound. Depending on their pace, some drivers were able to extend their first stint well beyond the predicted window, opening up the possibility of using the Soft, as demonstrated by Tsunoda and Gasly.
After four races in five weeks, Formula 1 takes a short break ahead of the triple-header in the Americas. But for our group, the work on track continues, with four days of testing, which is only possible thanks to the vital support of the teams, in this case, Mercedes, Red Bull, Ferrari and McLaren.
The day on the track:
As expected, most of the field went for the Medium at the start: 14 drivers lined up on the C4, four (Stroll, Bottas, Zhou and Magnussen) on the C3 and two on the C5 (Hamilton and Ricciardo).
The Medium proved to be very flexible in terms of stint length, allowing nearly all drivers to complete the race, making just one pit stop. Depending on track position and traffic, we saw drivers stop as early as lap 13 (Sainz), while others even got all the way to lap 38 (Piastri). In fact, Ferrari’s Spanish driver did the longest stint of all, covering no less than 49 laps on the Hard.
The longest stint of all was driven by Pierre Gasly (Alpine), who completed 50 laps on the Hard, only pitting on the penultimate lap to switch to Softs. As for the Medium, Alex Albon made the most use of it, doing a long 20-lap second stint on the C4.
2024 Formula 1 Singapore Grand Prix Race Results
| Pos | No | Driver | Country | Team | Time | Points | Overall |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. | 4 | Lando Norris | Great Britain | Mclaren Racing | 1:40:52.571 | 25 | 279 |
| 2. | 1 | Max Verstappen | Netherlands | Red Bull Racing | +20.945s | 18 | 331 |
| 3. | 81 | Oscar Piastri | Australia | McLaren Racing | +41.823s | 15 | 237 |
| 4. | 63 | George Russell | Great Britain | Mercedes-AMG Petronas | +61.040s | 12 | 155 |
| 5. | 16 | Charles Leclerc | Monaco | Scuderia Ferrari | +62.430s | 10 | 245 |
| 6. | 44 | Lewis Hamilton | Great Britain | Mercedes-AMG Petronas | +85.248s | 8 | 174 |
| 7. | 55 | Carlos Sainz | Spain | Scuderia Ferrari | +96.039s | 6 | 190 |
| 8. | 14 | Fernando Alonso | Spain | Aston Martin F1 Team | +1 lap | 4 | 62 |
| 9. | 27 | Nico Hulkenberg | Germany | Haas F1 Team | +1 lap | 2 | 24 |
| 10. | 11 | Sergio Perez | Mexico | Red Bull Racing | +1 lap | 1 | 144 |
| 11. | 43 | Franco Colapinto | Argentina | Williams Racing | +1 lap | 0 | 4 |
| 12. | 22 | Yuki Tsunoda | Japan | Visa Cash App F1 Team | +1 lap | 0 | 22 |
| 13. | 31 | Esteban Ocon | France | Alpine F1 Team | +1 lap | 0 | 5 |
| 14. | 18 | Lance Stroll | Canada | Aston Martin F1 Team | +1 lap | 0 | 24 |
| 15. | 24 | Zhou Guanyu | China | Kick Sauber F1 Team | +1 lap | 0 | 0 |
| 16. | 77 | Valtteri Bottas | Finland | Kick Sauber F1 Team | +1 lap | 0 | 0 |
| 17. | 10 | Pierre Gasly | France | Alpine F1 Team | +1 lap | 0 | 8 |
| 18. | 3 | Daniel Ricciardo | Australia | Visa Cash App F1 Team | +1 lap | 0 | 12 |
| 19. | 20 | Kevin Magnussen | Denmark | Haas F1 Team | DNF | 0 | 7 |
| 7. | 23 | Alexander Albon | Thailand | Williams Racing | DNF | 0 | 12 |
2024 Constructor Standings
| Pos | Team | Points |
|---|---|---|
| 1. | McLaren Racing | 516 |
| 2. | Red Bull Racing | 475 |
| 3. | Scuderia Ferrari | 441 |
| 4. | Mercedes-AMG Petronas | 329 |
| 5. | Aston Martin F1 Team | 86 |
| 6. | Visa Cash App F1 Team | 34 |
| 7. | Haas F1 Team | 31 |
| 8. | Williams Racing | 16 |
| 9. | Alpine F1 Team | 13 |
| 10. | Kick Sauber F1 Team | 0 |
Here are the team-by-team highlights:
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