Verstappen takes first Singapore GP win as Hamilton’s gamble costs a podium

Max Verstappen’s 250th Grand Prix start brought a victory that had long eluded him: the Singapore Grand Prix. He beat Charles Leclerc and Kimi Antonelli at Marina Bay on Sunday, completing a weekend in which he topped both qualifying sessions and won the Sprint as well as the Grand Prix.

The breakthrough came at his 10th attempt, after four previous Singapore podiums without a win. It followed his and Red Bull’s first victory of 2026 at the Bahrain Grand Prix in Malaysia and moved Verstappen to fourth in the drivers’ standings. He said the recent races had been positive and that the team was motivated to deliver more results.

Leclerc threatened Verstappen into Turn 1 but backed out of the move. Ferrari’s drivers had started on different compounds: Leclerc matched Verstappen on soft tyres, while Lewis Hamilton chose mediums. The soft compound proved the better race option, leaving Hamilton at a disadvantage.

Hamilton had already switched from his starting mediums to soft tyres. Their strategies separated again under the Virtual Safety Car. Leclerc stopped for fresh tyres; Hamilton said Ferrari had also called him in, but he missed the pit entry. After that, he chose to stay out and try to protect his track position until the finish.

Fading soft tyres left Hamilton vulnerable in the closing laps. Antonelli, Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri all passed him, dropping him to sixth while Leclerc finished second. After the race, Hamilton said the result did not reflect the car’s pace and apologised to Ferrari for the points lost. “I take full responsibility for the decisions I made,” he said.

Both McLaren drivers finished ahead of Hamilton on Sunday, but Norris said he was unhappy with fourth. During the summer of 2026, he had taken two dominant victories.

Saturday’s wet Sprint had brought an intra-team collision at Turn 5 on the final lap. Norris spun but reached the finish in eighth; Piastri was eliminated. Norris defended his right to attempt the pass, while Piastri believed his team-mate had been a substantial distance behind for that type of corner. The stewards took no further action, but team principal Andrea Stella said he was disappointed with his drivers’ actions.

George Russell had entered the weekend knowing that power-unit component changes would put him at the back of Sunday’s grid. He took the lead from Verstappen at the start of the wet Sprint, but running over the exit kerb at the final corner sent him into the pit wall before the opening lap was complete. In the Grand Prix, he could recover only to ninth, unable to get past Liam Lawson or Nico Hulkenberg.

Antonelli’s podium required him to recover a position lost to Norris during the pit-stop sequence. He passed both the McLaren and Hamilton in the closing stages to finish third. The podium, together with five points for fourth in the Sprint, helped extend his advantage over Mercedes team-mate Russell to 102 points. Antonelli could mathematically clinch the title at the next round in the United States.