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A third win for Lando Norris,
who led from lights out to chequered flag. It marked McLaren’s return to the
top step of the Singapore podium, after a break of 15 years since Lewis
Hamilton won in 2009. Norris crossed the line ahead of Max Verstappen in the
Red Bull, the Dutchman still not managing to win here, while also extending
his current winless streak to eight Grands Prix. Third was Oscar Piastri in
the other McLaren, thus securing his ninth top-three finish from 40 Grand
Prix starts. The Woking-based team has now managed to get at least one
driver on the podium for the past 14 races, with a total of 17 podium
finishes. Daniel Ricciardo took the race fastest lap for the 17th time in
his career, the last one dating back to Monza 2021, at the wheel of a
McLaren. It is Racing Bulls’ first ever fastest lap.
THE DAY ON
TRACK:
As expected, most of the field went for the Medium at the start: 14 drivers
lined up on the C4, four (Stroll, Bottas, Zhou and Magnussen) on the C3 and
two on the C5 (Hamilton and Ricciardo).
The Medium proved to be very flexible in terms of stint length, allowing
nearly all drivers to complete the race making just one pit stop. Depending
on track position and traffic, we saw drivers stop as early as lap 13
(Sainz) while others even got all the way to lap 38 (Piastri). In fact,
Ferrari’s Spanish driver did the longest stint of all, covering no less than
49 laps on the Hard.
MARIO ISOLA - MOTORSPORT DIRECTOR
"All in all, this was a relatively straightforward race, without a single
neutralisation, the first time that has happened in the history of this
race. The one-stop proved to be definitely the quickest and all three
compounds behaved as expected. The Medium and the Hard clearly saw the most
use, but the Soft also proved its worth, as could be seen for example in the
times set by Hamilton on full fuel load in his first 17 lap stint, or with
Tsunoda over 28 laps in the second part of the race, with a perfectly
acceptable level of degradation.
“When it comes to evaluating tyre performance, an important factor to
consider is the level of pace management adopted by the drivers, together
with how much traffic they encountered at various stages of the race. That
was particularly relevant with the Medium, because depending on their pace,
some drivers were able to extend their first stint well beyond the window
predicted by the strategy simulations, which opened up the possibility of
using the Soft, as was the case with the aforementioned Tsunoda and Gasly.
“After four races in five weeks, Formula 1 takes a short break now, ahead of
the triple-header in the Americas. But for our group, the work on track
continues, with four days of testing which is only possible thanks to the
vital support of the teams, in this case, Mercedes, Red Bull, Ferrari and
McLaren."
COMING UP NEXT FOR OUR TYRES
The World Championship now takes an unusual, if welcome, three week break
prior to the final part of the season, starting with the United States Grand
Prix, at Austin Texas from 18 to 20 October. However, in that time, Pirelli
will still be busy on track with two test sessions planned for early
October. On 1st and 2nd, Mercedes will be working with us at Magny-Cours, on
2025 tyre development, including one day given over to wet weather tyre
work. Then, on 8th and 9th, three teams will be in action at the Mugello
circuit: Red Bull for two days and Ferrari for one day will be working on
next year’s tyres, while, for two days, McLaren will carry out the second
development test of the 2026 prototype tyres.
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