Norris survives two wall strikes to dominate Singapore GP

Lando Norris survived two swipes of the unforgiving Singapore barriers to dominate the 2024 Singapore Grand Prix and cut Max Verstappen’s Formula 1 championship lead down to 52 points with six full races and three sprints remaining.

McLaren driver Norris looked the most at ease of the frontrunners with his F1 car around the Marina Bay circuit from the earliest laps of Friday practice and, having converted pole position into the lead at the start, had such strong pace he could gap the field almost at will.

Verstappen’s Red Bull, which impressively qualified second after a complete set-up turnaround on Friday night, was able to match Norris’s pace in the early laps, albeit running at a two-second deficit.

When McLaren asked Norris how comfortable he felt running at that pace, Norris replied he was at “pace 6 or something”.

McLaren asked him to open the gap out to five seconds to protect from a potentially powerful Red Bull undercut at the pitstops, but Norris was so comfortable as he upped his pace that he was sometimes lapping a second or more per lap quicker than his rival.

Norris was so fast in fact that he was never in danger of being overtaken in the pits even though he locked up and almost crashed at Turn 14 towards the end of that first stint. He feared front wing damage but the team could spot nothing. 

It was a lucky escape for Norris, who clouted the wall again towards the end of the race and was told to take a drink, refocus, “chill out” and bring it home safely.

Once again Norris narrowly escaped unscathed, before racing on to victory by a massive 20.9s, despite also running wide late-on while lapping Franco Colapinto’s Williams, as Norris continued to flirt with disaster.

VERSTAPPEN'S DAMAGE LIMITATION

Although he couldn’t challenge the lead McLaren, finishing a distant second still represented excellent damage limitation for Verstappen on a circuit where Red Bull struggled so badly in 2023.

That damage limitation was aided further by Daniel Ricciardo - in what might turn out to be his final race in F1 - making a late third stop for soft tyres on his RB and stealing fastest lap away from Norris’s McLaren.

Verstappen’s race was made more comfortable by third-place qualifier Lewis Hamilton starting on the soft tyre, failing to get past the Red Bull on lap one and then holding up Mercedes team-mate George Russell in trying to extend the life of those delicate soft tyres through the first stint.

But once Hamilton made his inevitably-early stop, Russell wasn’t able to unleash any pent up devastating pace within his Mercedes.

In fact he remained under serious pressure from the second McLaren of Oscar Piastri. The McLaren was so kind to the Pirellis around this track that even the medium-shod Mercedes of Russell pitted out of Piastri’s way, lifting him to third after starting fifth.

Piastri stayed out longer than any of the other frontrunners, waiting until the end of lap 38 of 62. He questioned the sense in being required to repass both Mercedes on track, but such was the tyre-life offset he enjoyed that Piastri managed to overtake both with relative ease and complete the podium.

The second McLaren probably had the pace to beat Verstappen in a normal race, but the deficit of starting behind the two Mercedes was simply too much to overcome and so Piastri elected not to force the issue in that final stint.

FERRARI’S MISSED OPPORTUNITY

Ferrari recovered from a disastrous qualifying to salvage fifth and seventh places, with Charles Leclerc ahead of Carlos Sainz.

Leclerc really should have figured in the lead fight here given his strong Friday practice form and Ferrari's suitability to an outlier track like this, but Leclerc was thrown completely out of contention by a lap-time deletion and then a tyre blanket problem in Q3, which consigned him to starting ninth.

Leclerc spent the first part of the race bottled up behind Fernando Alonso’s Aston Martin and Nico Hulkenberg’s Haas, although Leclerc eventually passed both on-track and then extended his stint to gain a tyre advantage for the final part of the race.

Sainz, who crashed in Q3 after struggling with brake problems sapping his confidence earlier in the weekend, got shuffled back on the first lap but utilised an early pitstop to good effect to clear the slower cars.

He let Leclerc past so that he could chase after the Mercedes drivers.

In similar fashion to Piastri’s McLaren, Leclerc put that tyre offset to good use, overtaking Hamilton’s wilting Mercedes and then piling the pressure on Russell over the final 10 laps.

Russell complained of understeer and oversteer on his Mercedes as he watched Leclerc home in. Leclerc eliminated the deficit but couldn’t find a way through, even with the benefit of a fourth DRS zone, saying the Mercedes' traction was too good to overcome.

PEREZ DISAPPOINTS

After factoring in the lead fight last time out in Azerbaijan, Sergio Perez endured another underwhelming race.

He was another among the leading group of eight cars to underperform in qualifying, struggling with his brakes and to get the tyres working. 

Even so he should really have been up there with Sainz by the end of the race, but struggled badly during a long stint on hard tyres where he complained his Red Bull had no traction and was “bouncing like a kangaroo”.

Unlike the Ferraris, Perez wasn’t able to overcome the leading midfield cars of Alonso and Hulkenberg and so had to settle for a lowly 10th - at one stage coming under pressure from Colapinto's Williams.

Alonso ran behind Hulkenberg for the first part of the race, but after getting repassed by Piastri’s McLaren on the first lap Hulkenberg was never able to make a gap on Alonso’s Aston and so fell victim to being undercut at the pitstops.