Lambiase and Antonelli lead Cleeren’s wide-ranging Singapore GP assessment

Gianpiero Lambiase received Red Bull’s constructors’ trophy after Max Verstappen’s controlled Singapore victory. The tearful presentation may have been Lambiase’s last win as Verstappen’s race engineer: Red Bull plans to phase him out ahead of his move to McLaren. In his wider post-race review, Motorsport.com columnist Filip Cleeren puts the engineer first, then turns to Kimi Antonelli’s title focus, Ferrari’s strategy, McLaren’s internal tensions and Honda’s problems.

Tom Hart is Lambiase’s named replacement and is due to take over the team radio for several races later this season. Verstappen and Lambiase won both the sprint and Grand Prix in Singapore, but Cleeren cautions that further victories as a pair are not assured.

Ferrari still had a podium chance

Cleeren does not present Ferrari’s Singapore strategy as an obvious blunder. The team split its starting tyres, putting Charles Leclerc on softs and Hamilton on mediums to pressure Verstappen. When that plan failed, Cleeren says Ferrari was still well placed for a double podium. But the medium tyre performed particularly poorly in Singapore, while McLaren put both drivers on softs—an option Ferrari might have anticipated.

Cleeren’s main criticism is Hamilton’s decision under a virtual safety car. Ferrari called him in for a double-stack stop, but he did not come in. Cleeren believes that accepting the call would probably have secured second and third for Ferrari.

Separately, Cleeren points to Hamilton’s sixth place after an excessively long stint on softs. Ferrari team principal Fred Vasseur questioned whether McLaren had faced the same number of questions the day before. Cleeren’s answer was that Motorsport.com had indeed asked the team that many.

Norris’s mistakes, Antonelli’s composure

McLaren’s tensions came into view in the sprint. Norris lunged at teammate Oscar Piastri on the final lap of the 20-lap sprint, and the pair made contact; Cleeren considered the move unnecessary given the little at stake. After Sunday’s Grand Prix, Norris acknowledged that his first attempt to pass Hamilton was one of several poor decisions and said he had let the team down.

McLaren team principal Andrea Stella also pointed to Norris’s Sunday offer to hold Hamilton up so Piastri could catch him. Stella said that version of Norris was closer to the driver he wanted to see going forward, and that there would be more conversations before the United States Grand Prix.

Antonelli’s place among Cleeren’s winners came not from a perfect weekend but from his candour about the title. The 20-year-old Mercedes driver said he had not driven as well as he could in Singapore, while acknowledging that he could theoretically clinch the championship at the next race in Austin. Cleeren admired the way Antonelli treated that possibility as a reason to stay sharp, rather than pretending the title was still far away.

Honda’s difficult weekend

Cleeren named Honda as a loser, while acknowledging that Aston Martin was also an obvious candidate. He considered the AMR26-Honda package well suited to Singapore, but power-unit problems left neither Fernando Alonso nor Lance Stroll able to compete; both started from the pit lane and failed to recover. Alonso had scored points in Malaysia, but Cleeren warned that other circuits might not offer the same opportunities.