Norris can’t claim full reward despite most dominant display this season

There are few sports on Earth where competitors are active for as long a sustained period as they are in motorsport.

One cricket test match may take place over five days, but the ball is only ‘live’ for a handful of seconds at a time. The players on the pitch spend the vast majority of time waiting for the next ball or in the pavilion, watching.

Footballers may have to play for 90 minutes split into two halves of 45 minutes, but even they get to catch their breath when the ball is out of play. American footballers get 40 seconds of respite in between plays. Ice hockey’s 60 minutes are broken up into three 20-minute periods with plenty of breaks in play to regroup or change lines.

In motorsport, drivers don’t have that luxury. Especially in Formula 1. From the moment the lights go out until the second they take the chequered flag, F1 drivers are ‘in play’ for the full 305-plus-a-bit kilometres. Aside from the possible interruptions of a red flag, Safety Car or Virtual Safety Car, there’s no moment of respite.

With the sheer skill and elite ability demonstrated by the 20 drivers on the grid each and every race weekend, it’s easy to forget what a feat of concentration and consistency for drivers to complete a grand prix without making a single race-ending error over what can be more than 1,000 corners. That is, until they arrive at a circuit like Singapore.

The Marina Bay circuit may have trimmed four turns from its five-kilometre layout last year, but it remains arguably the greatest test of endurance drivers face all season. Not just for the 19 corners of its lap around genuine city streets, but for the oppressive raw heat, energy-sapping humidity and extreme length, with races regularly running up to the two-hour time limit.

Simply put, this is the longest night of the F1 season.

McLaren’s Lando Norris prepared himself for one of the toughest tests he would face all year long having put himself in the best possible position to do by taking pole position the previous night. The driver he is trying to chase down in the championship, Max Verstappen, sat one place behind him, just as he had the last time the pair shared the front row together in Zandvoort. But while the world champion was more than happy to be second given the McLaren’s perceived superiority, he knew he would have taken pole had he matched his best time from Q2.

Behind the season’s two main protagonists sat Lewis Hamilton, leading an all-Mercedes second row. Oscar Piastri was fifth – like Verstappen, his superior Q2 pace had evaporated in the heat when he needed it most.

While racing around the Singapore circuit is challenging, deciding on a race strategy is much less so – start on mediums before fitting hard tyres during your single stop. So when Mercedes removed their tyre blankets before the start to reveal they had fitted Hamilton with softs, he immediately became the one to watch for at the start.

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Across Norris’ seven total starts from pole position in sprint races and grands prix, the McLaren driver had never led the opening lap of a single one. Norris knew the best form of defence against Verstappen in the race would be to deny him the lead into turn one, but that meant his reaction at the lights could not afford to be slower than Verstappen’s or the soft-shod Hamilton behind them.

Verstappen’s race engineer Gianpiero Lambiase knew his driver would be itching to jump his rival and cautioned him as he approached his grid slot. “Final reminder,” Lambiase told him, stressing each of his following words in turn. “Normal grip release.”

When the lights went out, Norris’s reactions did not let him down. He sprang forth off the line with enough speed that Verstappen never had a hope of beating him. As Norris took his line for turn one, Verstappen had to defend from Hamilton and his superior traction behind. Had the run to the first corner been 300 metres long, rather than just 200, Hamilton may well have seized second. Instead, he could only draw level with the Red Bull before having to hit the brakes and surrender the place.

As the leaders swept through the first turns in the same order they had started, George Russell locked his left-front wheel just enough to send him wide of the apex, obstructing Piastri to his outside and allowing Nico Hulkenberg to exploit the Haas-sized space left to the inside to take fifth from the second McLaren. As Norris led the field, the second McLaren lined up Hulkenberg into turn seven to take back that which had been snatched from him.

Norris crossed the timing line to finally rid himself of ever having to hear about his zero percent pole-to-lead conversion rate ever again, but Verstappen was within the second needed to use his DRS on the run from turn five to seven. By the time they reached the second DRS zone at the exit of turn 13, Norris had already broken clear. As it transpired, Verstappen would only get within DRS range of the leader for just a single one of the 244 zones they would drive through over the course of the race.

Behind the leading pair, Hamilton’s bid to join them on his softs had failed to pay off. Mercedes immediately gave him instructions to manage his delicate rubber, which allowed Russell to loom large in his mirrors before he too was told he should be managing his tyres.

Initially, Verstappen largely matched the leader’s lap times, the pair both in the high 1’37s. But Norris’ race engineer Will Joseph asked him to try and grew his lead to over five seconds by around lap 15. On the eighth lap, Norris kicked in like a long-distance runner, gradually dropping into the 1’36s while Verstappen continued at his previous speed. Now Norris’ lead was growing by around a second a lap, with Verstappen seemingly having no answer for his sudden burst of speed.

Norris had accomplished his mission of gaining five seconds by lap 11 but had no intention of stopping at that. He continued in the 1’36s, then fell into the 1’37s at the same time that Verstappen dropped back into the 1’38s behind him. By lap 16, Norris had stretched his advantage to over 11 seconds – more than double what McLaren had tasked him with.

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It was little surprise when Hamilton was the first of the leading drivers to pit at the end of the 17th lap. That moved Russell up to third, but he had Piastri now sitting around a second behind him and eager to get by.

For McLaren, there was minimal risk of Verstappen undercutting Norris if he pitted early, save for some kind of pit stop calamity striking the team. But with Norris’s own victory in Miami on their minds, McLaren did not want to pit their leader before the Red Bull and be hit with a sudden Safety Car that would gift Verstappen the lead through an advantageous pit stop. And so Norris was instructed to continue on his way and ensure he was kind enough on his tyres so they would not have to pit before Verstappen.

Behind, Piastri was now putting Russell under serious pressure for third place. But before Russell would have to start defending his position, Mercedes called him in at the end of lap 27 to put him onto hard tyres, getting Russell back out ahead of his team mate and, thus, picking up a position from him.

Norris could hardly have looked more in control out front. As he crossed the line to begin lap 29, Verstappen was 24 seconds behind him hitting the brakes for 14 at the end of the middle sector. The leader had shown supreme speed and concentration through the first 545 corners of the race, but entering the 546th, under no pressure at all, Norris almost threw everything away.

Hitting the brakes for turn 14, Norris ran far too deep into the tight right-hander, coming to a near-stop and brushing against the tyre wall on the left hand side. “No way!” gasped Verstappen when he saw the incident after the race.

“I have front wing damage, maybe,” Norris frantically reported to his team. “Maybe front wing damage.”

The mistake cost Norris around three-and-a-half seconds of his lead, but as he remained out to begin lap 30, Verstappen pitted behind him to switch onto the hard tyres. Norris was informed he had suffered “minor” damage from the contact, but his team were otherwise unconcerned.

McLaren responded to Red Bull’s pit stop by bringing the leader in at the end of the next lap, rejoining just ahead of the yet-to-stop Piastri. What had been a 26 second advantage over Verstappen before his lap 29 mishap was now around 18 seconds, but that was still more than comfortable.

Having avoided an undignified and unforced exit from the race, Norris returned to his previous pace on his new hards, extending his advantage one again. Piastri, now on almost 40-lap-old mediums, was sat in second, the final car towards the front who was yet to stop. Despite suggesting that having to pass Hamilton’s Mercedes on track would be “not a great idea”, McLaren had more faith in their youngest driver’s abilities, keeping Piastri out until the end of lap 39 for a 24-lap charge on hard tyres to the finish.

Piastri’s 20-lap fresher hard tyres allowed him to quickly catch up to Hamilton with far superior cornering speed than the Mercedes. Although Hamilton attempted to repel the McLaren by covering the inside on the run to turn seven, Piastri had more than enough grip and confidence to simply sweep around the outside of him into fourth, easily completing the move he had seemed doubtful of pulling off just laps before his stop.

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It took just four laps for Piastri to make up the five seconds to Russell ahead in the final podium position. Passing Hamilton had given him the blueprint for how to overtake a Mercedes and although his tyre offset to Russell was only half what it had been to Hamilton a few laps before, Piastri had the benefit of a superior McLaren as well as fresher tyres.

Russell clearly had not seen Hamilton’s attempt to keep Piastri behind him on the spectator diamond screens around the circuit as he attempted to defend to the inside of turn seven in the same futile manner. Piastri just took the same approach again, braking later and sweeping around the outside for third.

Although the Mercedes pair had been vanquished, making up 18 seconds to catch Verstappen over the final 17 laps was simply too much to ask. With Verstappen himself over 20 seconds still adrift of Norris, the podium was now set barring a sudden Safety Car or catastrophic loss of focus from the leading three.

But while his team mate was having behind him, Norris was not letting up out front. Although Verstappen’s lap times on hards were closer to the leader’s than they had been through the opening stint, the Red Bull was still losing time to Norris with every lap they completed.

Over 70 minutes into the race without any kind of interruption, the heat was starting to take its toll. As his team mate battled the Mercedes, Norris was continuing to push and on lap 45, he clipped the outside wall on the entry to turn 10 with his right-rear wheel. Although the same misjudgement had put an end to Russell’s race on the final lap here last year, Norris seemed to have escaped without punishment for an error for the second time in the race. Almost as if to prove to himself his car was fine, Norris immediately posted his fastest lap of the race so far.

“I was definitely pushing,” he later explained. “Probably too much, hence the mistakes I was making, or the two mistakes I made with the wall. On these cars, as soon as you tweak something a tiny bit, it can have quite a big impact, but nothing that I was feeling.”

Norris was far from the only driver whose pinpoint accuracy was beginning to waver with fatigue. Russell brushed the wall exiting turn 13, while just a tap with the wall at turn five was enough to puncture Kevin Magnussen’s left-rear tyre, leaving him crawling back to the pits. But when the Haas driver successfully reached the pit lane, it appeared as if this would indeed be the first ever Singapore Grand Prix to run entirely without any kind of Safety Car neutralisation.

Victory looked assured for Norris, but while the 25 points were a clear boost for his championship pursuit of Verstappen, the Red Bull driver was still just one place behind. On lap 48, Norris had posted the fastest lap of the race, provisionally handing him the extra bonus point that he did not have the luxury to ignore. With that achieved, Joseph tried to settle his driver down, telling him “full concentration now – take a drink.”

However, Norris continued to push, building his lead to over 28 seconds – tantalisingly close to a complete pit stop over Verstappen that would allow him to stop for soft tyres to cement the fastest lap on the final tour. However, he was also closing on a pack of four lapped cars including Verstappen’s Red Bull team mate Sergio Perez. The price of an error on worn tyres in dirty air was clearly too high to risk, so Norris backed off to just complete the final 10 laps of the race in comfort and consolidate his victory.

Meanwhile, towards the back of the field, RB driver Daniel Ricciardo was languishing in 18th place having already pitted twice. Other than for Magnussen’s unscheduled pit stop, the veteran of over 250 starts had effectively been last with nothing to play for in the final laps.

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Ricciardo’s weekend had been a turbulent one. Rumours around his immediate future in Formula 1 had been growing in volume in the paddock, as they tend to do when a team is making moves behind the scenes, but with nothing announced and no plans for an announcement until the three-week break following the Singapore race, all it had led to was awkward, evasive answers from all the key figures involved over the weekend.

A former Red Bull driver and the most competitive team mate Verstappen had ever had, Ricciardo was now a shadow of his former self in the second team owned by the world champions. While it had yet to be announced, Ricciardo had reached the end of the road – but he still had laps left to prove useful to his old team for one final time.

Although his tyres were barely 10 laps old, Ricciardo was called in with a handful of laps remaining for the newest set of softs available to him. The intention from Red Bull’s second team was clear, even if team principal Laurent Mekies’ later insisted the team had pitted him as a kind of farewell gesture for the eight-times grand prix winner.

But as Ricciardo was setting purple sectors on what was likely to be the final flying lap of his Formula 1 career, Norris was about to call it a night out front. His lead may have dropped by several seconds over the final ten laps, but as he crossed the line to secure his third career victory, he still enjoyed a significant margin of over 20 seconds to Verstappen.

“Of course, the bigger the gap you can have, the happier you’re going to be,” he said. “But I’m just happy we finished on top and we got maximum points and got another win. It’s always going to be a tough race here, but I felt good all weekend, so all I had to do was go out there and perform like I’ve been performing and all things were going to go well.”

Although his win drought had been extended with another defeat, Verstappen was again happier to have minimised the damage to his championship advantage than he was frustrated to be such a distant second.

“Compared to the start of the weekend, we improved quite nicely,” he said. “I think that’s been great for us as a team. On a track that we know we’re not performing normally the best. I’m happy with second today.”

Piastri had made up two places from his disappointing qualifying result to take the final podium position in third. But after winning the previous weekend in Baku, he could accept that Singapore had simply belonged to his team mate.

“Even if the end result wasn’t exactly what I hoped, I think we’ve done a good job of maximising the points, especially for the team,” said Piastri. “It’s a massive points haul for us, and I feel like I’ve learned some good lessons for next year as well. All in all, reasonably happy.”

Russell claimed fourth place after holding his nerve over the final laps to keep a late-charging Leclerc behind him. Hamilton finished sixth, with both Mercedes drivers so physically drained by the relentless race that they were visibly exhausted in parc ferme. Both were relieved of their usual media duties after the race.

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Carlos Sainz Jnr finished seventh, a handful of second ahead of Fernando Alonso. Nico Hulkenberg claimed more points for Haas with a brilliant ninth place, frustrating Perez who could not find a way around him despite several laps of DRS over the second stint.

But although he was far from the points, Ricciardo ensured that if this would be his final grand prix, he would depart after making an impact on the race. He took the fastest lap with what was likely the penultimate lap of his career, robbing the driver who had shown him up so badly at McLaren of that extra bonus point.

Ricciardo’s late race intervention made a material difference to the championship picture. Now, even if Norris wins every remaining grand prix and sprint race until the end of the season, second place would still be enough to secure Verstappen the title. After a race in which Verstappen simply could not keep pace with the McLaren once again, Norris’s prospects of winning out look higher than they ever have before.

But after surviving two close encounters with the barriers over the course of the longest 62 laps of the season, Norris knows the final six rounds will not be any easier.

“I’m sure there’s going to be plenty of competition until the end of the year, and as a team, the only thing we can do is try and score the most points possible,” Norris said. “That includes trying to win.

“We are doing a better job as a team right now because my car and our car is quicker than theirs. I’m working my heart out, I’m working my butt off, to try and make sure that happens. He’s trying to make sure it doesn’t happen. So we’ll have to wait and find out.”