Max Verstappen won a wild Singapore Sprint, with Lewis Hamilton close behind and Charles Leclerc finishing third.
It’s Verstappen’s 14th Sprint win, coming in the 30th Sprint in F1 history. But it did not come easy for the Dutchman.
“The start was horrendous again,” Verstappen said after the Sprint. “Definitely something we need to improve on, because if that happens tomorrow, that’s probably your race over.
“Not ideal, but we got lucky with what happened to George [Russell] there in the last corner. And after that, just had to keep it calm because around here, you can’t pass in conditions like this with the intermediates.”
A downpour of rain suddenly hit the track with 13 minutes to go before the start of the formation lap, causing a delayed start.
The front area of the track, from turns 16 to 5, were absolutely pounded with rain. But the back section was bone dry.
The formation lap was delayed 30 minutes, with an extra lap being held to ensure the track was fit to race.
After two formation laps and a standing start, Russell took the lead on lap one from Verstappen. Things seemed to start off well until the end of the first lap, with two crucial incidents.
Russell hit the curbing coming off turn 19, accelerated off of it, and spun out straight into the frontstretch wall.
The entire field was able to pass Russell without incident, except for Sergio Perez and Lance Stroll.
Stroll and Perez made contact entering turn 16 on the same lap, with Stroll spinning out and Perez retiring after returning to pit road.
It took five laps of the now-20-lap Sprint to go back to green. When the field did, Alexander Albon drove into the back of Gabriel Bortoleto, with Valtteri Bottas also making contact.
All three would retire from the Sprint, with Albon spending a few laps still out there until the stewards ruled that the incident would be investigated after the race; Williams were hoping to serve any potential penalty now instead of later.
The rest of the race was largely the remaining drivers doing everything to stretch their intermediate tires to the finish. Verstappen and Hamilton were able to drive off with a large gap from the rest of the field, but Leclerc spent the last two laps being hounded by the two McLaren drivers and Kimi Antonelli.
On the last lap, Lando Norris tried to make a move on Oscar Piastri into turn 5. The two McLarens made contact and spun out. Norris would continue on to complete the lap to finish eighth and take a point, while Piastri couldn’t get the care fired again and retired from the Sprint.
Leclerc would hold off Antonelli to the line, who finished fourth and now has an 89 point lead in the championship with seven races remaining.
Nine retirements meant there was a lot of attrition. Liam Lawson finished fifth and Oliver Bearman took sixth. Nico Hulkenberg finished seventh and took two points, a big boost for Audi to retain eighth in the constructors championship.
2026 F1 Singapore Grand Prix Sprint Results
The Singapore Grand Prix will go green Sunday, October 11, at 8 a.m. ET with coverage in the United States on Apple TV.
Michael has watched NASCAR for over 25 years and has covered it on-and-off for 14.
In addition to Frontstretch he also writes sporadically for his own websites GrandPrixFocus.com and StockCarFocus.com.
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