Max Verstappen was never likely to win the championship this weekend, but the way he didn’t win it came as a genuine surprise.
After five unstoppable weekends of domination, both team and driver stumbled in Singapore in an uncharacteristically scrappy weekend that gifted Charles Leclerc a chance to prolong the campaign for at least another round.
Leclerc duly delivered, but in a typical Ferrari fashion the pole-sitter was good enough for only second behind the underratedly excellent Sergio Perez, who absorbed the Monegasque driver’s pressure beautifully despite an engine problem to take his fourth career victory.
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Perez was almost perfect, with only a couple of clumsy misadventures behind the safety car threatening to blot his copybook — though thankfully for him, the stewards came down somewhat leniently after the race.
And just off the podium McLaren and Aston Martin scored big points with some astute management of the conditions in results that could redirect where the big bucks handed out at the end of the year, and Daniel Ricciardo clocked up a much-needed top-five finish for the first time in a long, long time.
VINDICATION FOR PERFECT PEREZ
Sergio Perez couldn’t have picked a better time to pull a composed victory out of the bag, having been under the pump for a major downturn in form.
Since his landmark Monaco Grand Prix victory and unexpected insertion into the title fight the Mexican had stood on the podium just three times before landing in Singapore. In the meanwhile he’d haemorrhaged massive points to teammate Verstappen, dropping from 15 points adrift to a whopping 125 points off the lead.
It wasn’t simply by chance that he was losing so many points either. He’d been slipping further and further off the pace as the year went on to the point he was barely reminiscent of his strong season-opening form.
Most concerning was that he was slipping off the pace as the car was getting faster. As the machine was honed, he found himself less able to reach for its ceiling. Verstappen, meanwhile, was able to make the RB18 dance as he wanted to until he’d worked himself into a dominant title position.
Suddenly Red Bull Racing’s decision to sign Perez up for two more seasons after that quick start were beginning to look foolhardy.
But his assured performance in Singapore was an important reminder of what he’s capable of, even if it takes a bit of circumstance to unlock the pace.
It wasn’t just his ability to control the race either — albeit around a track that makes overtaking difficult. His final 10 laps after breaking Leclerc’s siege were impressive as he attempted to build a penalty-proof buffer to second place. Not every driver can handle that kind of risk so well on wearing tyres in slippery conditions around a trying circuit.
One victory doesn’t solve all his problems much in the same way that one clumsy defeat to Verstappen doesn’t write off his year, but for a driver like Perez, who needs his confidence and self-belief nurtured, it’s an excellent tonic ahead of the final part of the season in which he’ll be racing for pride more than anything else.
BUT PENALTY PROMISES TO RANKLE
There was of course one blemish on Perez’s performance: his apparently constant inability to keep hold of the safety car during both deployments.
Perez’s victory was provisional for hours after the end of the already delayed race while the stewards deliberated over whether his behaviour warranted a penalty.
The rules stipulate that the leader must keep within 10 car lengths of the safety car before the safety car lights go out. Only once the safety car is called in and extinguishes its lights is the leader free to control the pace.
Perez was accused of failing to obey that rule several times during the two safety car interventions.
Having been notified of one alleged breach during the race, his team told him to “disappear” with the lead of the race to build a buffer to protect him from possible repercussions — without knowing how severe the penalty might be.
He crossed the line with a 7.5-second advantage.
In the end the stewards awarded two different penalties for to cover three of the same offences.
Perez was handed a reprimand for the first offence, was warned for the second offence and was slapped with a five-second penalty for the third offence in a punishment sure to rankle Ferrari fans at a minimum.
Two five-second penalties would’ve dropped Perez to second place behind Leclerc and markedly changed the championship picture by forcing Verstappen to outscore the Ferrari driver by 15 points in Japan rather than a more achievable eight points.
Perez argued that the wet conditions made it difficult to keep the safety car in his sights — a weak excuse given he also drew alongside the safety car encouraging it to speed up at other points during the caution periods.
A response from the stewards was certainly warranted. Was it logically consistent? It’s a question that’d be sure to be debated through the week were there not the meatier matter of the cost cap to deal with before Japan.
VERSTAPPEN BLOWS IT AFTER BLASTING THE TEAM
Verstappen’s spectacular blow-up about the team’s fuel miscalculation on Saturday came back to haunt him on Sunday, when errors of his own making undid what could have been a profitable race.
His problems began at the very start of the race, when a botched launch dropped him from eighth to 12th.
“Anti-stall,” he said. “I have no clue why or how. I felt like I did my normal procedure.”
But Red Bull motorsport adviser Helmut Marko told Sky Sports Germany that the Dutchman had his car in the wrong engine mode for the launch.
A typically feisty recovery ensued, with the Dutchman making 13 overtakes over the course of the race, but he undid much of his good work with a clumsy lock-up in his haste to get past Lando Norris after the second safety car restart, which sent him spiralling back down the order after an unscheduled stop for new tyres.
“I braked not even late but I bottomed out,” he explained. “I was really struggling a lot there with bottoming and being off-line was probably even more bumpy.
“As soon as I braked, the front wheels jumped in the air and that was it, I just went straight on.”
Seventh is all the race had for Verstappen, which is his equal worst finish but comfortably his worst performance of the year, made all the most stark for coming off the back of a dominant run of five straight victories.
It’s the sort of incongruous result Lewis Hamilton has had a tendency to turn in even during his dominant seasons. Occasionally he’d turn up and things just wouldn’t click; Verstappen endured very much that kind of weekend in Singapore.
So how did Verstappen judge his day, having eviscerated the team 24 hours earlier?
“I think we all know that it already kicked off yesterday and that’s why we put ourselves in that position,” Verstappen said. “Then it can either go brilliantly today or it can go like we had today
“After yesterday we cannot ask for miracles.”
One can only wonder what the team thinks about the Dutchman letting himself off so lightly.
McLAREN LANDS A BLOW ON EXPLOSIVE DAY FOR ALPINE
The Singapore Grand Prix would have long been marked as a danger race for McLaren. It’s not the sort of track that suits its trouble car, and Alpine, its rival for fourth in the standings, was expecting a strong result.
The British team had only one upgrade, enough for Lando Norris, while the French squad updated both cars.
And yet on Sunday night it was McLaren that emerged victorious in the simmering midfield rivalry with its strongest result of the season.
You’d have got long odds for such a result, only the team’s fifth double-points finish of the year.
Norris’s race was a well-judged defensive drive ahead of Fernando Alonso after jumping him from the start, while Daniel Ricciardo made enough forward movement after a sizzling start from 17th to put himself in a position to capitalise on a late safety car to rocket up the order afterwards.
They finished fourth and fifth at the flag, bettering the fifth and sixth they collected in Australia.
Better still, it was headlined by a sensational Ricciardo recovery, up 12 places on his 17th-place grid spot through some astute strategy and a sizzling start, a result worthy of a driver looking revitalised after a fortnight away from the sport.
“We needed this,” Ricciardo said of his first points-scoring finish since July and his highest finish since last year. “I certainly feel good. It’s been a long time.
“My last top five was probably a year ago in Saudi. I hadn’t had one this year, which is kind of sad, but we know the year it’s been, and I feel like I was certainly due some good fortune.”
The result was made all the sweeter for Alpine’s double retirement with dual engine failures.
It swung McLaren from 18 points behind Alpine to four points ahead in the battle for fourth in the constructors standings.
Momentum is hard to come by in the midfield when in an average race only four points-paying places are available, and for the last few months it seemed desperately unlikely McLaren would be able to generate enough to haul in the dependable Alpine cars.
But a big result like this — crucially one supported by both drivers, a facet painfully missing for so much of this season — is of the sort that could transform this battle in the final five rounds of the season.
ASTON MARTIN SHAKES UP THE BACK PACK
It’s been rare for Aston Martin to rate much of a mention in any context this season beyond driver market machinations — though it’s rumoured it’ll be named this week as having breach the cost cap — but a stunningly good result in Singapore has helped to inject some enthusiasm into the team’s story.
Aston Martin has had obvious difficulties getting the most out of the 2022 rules this season, changing concepts midstream and struggling to develop it with any great haste. It’s been toiling near the back of the pack for most of the season and seemed certain to end the campaign with an embarrassing slip to ninth in the standings.
But tracks like Singapore, which demand high downforce — the only configuration the car seems to really like — are where the team can attempt to change its fortune, and it did so with aplomb on Sunday.
As a rare treat, it could say it was the best-performing team among its chief rivals in the title standings.
On a day both Williams drivers crashed out of the race, Yuki Tsunoda binned his car and the Haas drivers struggled, with Kevin Magnussen again being caught out with a damaged front wing, both Aston Martin cars swanned through the race to finish sixth and eighth to score 12 points, only its second double score of the year.
It was enough to jump the team ahead of Haas and AlphaTauri with a three-point advantage over both.
Will it be enough to keep the place with five races remaining? Given none of these three teams has been anything close to consistent all year, there’s no discounting how important such a slim margin could be in the awarding of the millions of dollars of prize money.
