The F1 world title was put on hold after Mexican Red Bull driver Sergio Pérez won the Singapore Grand Prix, the seventeenth round of the season, while fellow defending champion and Dutch leader Max Verstappen finished seventh on Sunday after the marathon race.
After the start was delayed over an hour due to rain, the virtual safety car was activated and the real safety car entered more than once, the race ended after two hours and did not complete 61 laps, with Pérez winning against the Ferrari duo. Monaco’s Charles Leclerc and Spaniard Carlos Sainz, after dominating the race from the first lap, should be put on hold. The title was thus decided after Verstappen missed that first opportunity by finishing seventh.
Verstappen entered the Singapore race 116 points ahead of Leclerc and 125 points behind his teammate Pires, so he needed to extend the difference to 138 points to win his second title in a row with five races remaining and achieve the fastest victory since German legend Michael Schumacher. in 2002, six races ago.
But the weekend has looked very difficult since qualifying after he finished eighth due to a fuel error in the car on his last outing, making things harder for him and opening up the opportunity for Pires to claim his second win of the season and fourth of his career. .
The Mexican was in danger of losing a post-race victory if he finished 5 seconds or less behind Leclerc, after being penalized to add 5 seconds to his time as a result of violating safety car protocol and not keeping a safe distance from him, but secured the win , finishing more than 7.5 seconds ahead of the Ferrari driver despite some problems he experienced in the final laps.
“Definitely my best performance,” said the Mexican. “I dominated the race. The last three laps were very hot, and I felt it when I got out of the car after the race. Today I gave it my all.”
Commenting on the investigation against him by the race stewards, he said: “I really don’t know what happened. They just told me that I was under investigation.”
Pires beat Leclerc at the start
After the start of the race was delayed by an hour and five minutes due to rain, the drivers let their engines run and Pires managed to overtake Leclerc at the start, with Sens passing Hamilton to third while teammate Verstappen slipped from eighth. that he was ranked due to an error in the calculation of the amount of fuel during the qualifying session Saturday, in twelfth place.
After eight laps at the start, the safety car was forced onto the track after an accident between Canadian Nicholas Latifi (Williams) and Chinese Guanyu Joe (Alfa Romeo) to get the latter’s car off the track, with Latifi managing to return his car to his team’s garage before than he had to leave.
After two more races, the safety car pulled out and the drivers returned to the race, with Pérez managing to keep his car ahead of Leclerc.
As the laps progressed, the riders began talking to their engineers about the wear on the tires intended for the “intermediate links” of the wet track, as a result of the dryness of the track in some parts of it, coinciding with the virtual safety operation. car on lap 22 after the retirement of Spaniard Fernando Alonso, who was seventh before surrendering the Alpine engine, that his celebration of his record achievement as the fastest driver in G1 racing history overshadowed the race ahead of Kimi Räikkönen (350 to 349).
During the activation of the virtual safety car, the Mercedes team decided to take a chance with Briton George Russell and equip his car with medium soft dry track tires.
The decision was wrong as Russell struggled to find traction, but luck helped him and somewhat mitigated the damage: the virtual safety car reactivated to pick up some parts left behind by Alexander Albon’s Williams car after hitting the wall on lap 26 . it was then activated again on lap 29 after Alpine’s co-driver, Esteban Ocon, retired with a mechanical problem.
After the drivers returned to racing, Hamilton almost dropped out of the race on lap 33 due to driver error, but corrected the situation and returned to the track to be between his compatriot Lando Norris (McLaren) and Verstappen before the start of the drivers. changing their tires due to the dryness of the track, including Leclerc and Pires who managed to stay ahead of the Ferrari.
The safety car returned to the track again on lap 36 to lift Japan’s Yuki Tsunoda’s Alfatatori car after hitting the safety barrier at turn 10.
Rely on two hour time instead of laps
Due to the frequent activation of the virtual safety car and driving into the safety car twice and for a long time due to the difficulty of the stopping place of Tsunoda’s car, the organizers decided to remove the dependence on the number of laps making up the race (61) and start the countdown to the end of the race in two hours, which is 37 minutes.
The drivers restarted the race with 34 minutes left and Verstappen attempted to press but made a braking error while trying to overtake Norris, dropping to eighth.
The Dutchman stopped to change tires and came out in penultimate place, coinciding with the intensity of the competition up front after Leclerc managed to tighten the nuts on Pérez, who told his team “I have an engine problem”.
During this time, Norris was in turn closing in on Sinis for third place, but the Spaniard withstood the onslaught, as did Pérez, who gradually managed to get past Leclerc, who told him that his team should not let Pérez fall behind him. more than 5 seconds at the end of the race, just in case. The Red Bull driver was penalized for violating safety car protocol in an accident that was open to investigation by the race stewards without an immediate decision.
But the Mexican settled the matter when he finished 7.6 seconds ahead of the Ferrari driver in the final laps.