Luke’s Weekend Review – Singapore GP 2024

On Lap 18, Mercedes call Hamilton in for his stop in an attempt to undercut Verstappen and he comes out in 13^th from 3^rd, Hamilton however wasn’t too pleased with this decision as he was asking if he was the first one to pit and the team responded that he was one of the first in the front runners, Hamilton immediately said that he will struggle later on in the race as this was too early and was immediately says he was struggling with rears. On Lap 26 Hamilton says that the team is killing him with this offset to which Bono responded that they have loads of options to go for.

On Lap 21, the team advises Norris that they want to go long, and they don’t want to be the first to pit from the front, so they advised that if he needed to take care of tyres he could as the gap to Verstappen ad this stage was up to 16 seconds. Verstappen on Lap 27 says that he is struggling with the rears and GP tells him that it won’t be long now as the gap opens up to 22.5 seconds and Norris nearly has a full pitstop to Verstappen. Leclerc on Lap 24 was still tucked in behind Alonso and he comes on the radio frustrated asking how many laps are they going to do this as he was in a DRS train as Alonso was right behind Nico Hulkenberg, his engineer tells him to stay calm and by Lap 26 he was able to get past him, on the same lap Alonso decided to pit and comes out in 15^th ahead of his teammate from 7^th place, on Lap 29, Leclerc was also able to clear Hulkenberg which gave him some fresh air and up to 4^th.

On Lap 28 we see Russell come in from 3^rd to come out back in 8^th ahead of his teammate which for sure wouldn’t have made Hamilton happy. Perez follows Russell a lap later from 7^th who comes out in 14^th. On Lap 30 we get a strange radio message from Norris saying he got front wing damage as we see a replay of him having a close call and slightly brushes the wall with the front wing, On the same lap, Verstappen pits from 2^nd and comes out just behind Leclerc in 4^th which was not what he needed but by Lap 31, Verstappen manages to clear Leclerc. Later on Lap 30 we see Nico Hulkenberg, Franco Colapinto and Esteban Ocon all dive into the pits while on Lap 31 Norris decided to react to Red Bull and Verstappen and manages to come back out in the lead after the team decided that the front wing wasn’t bad enough to lose time on.

On Lap 34, Oscar Piastri was still out, and he is still going strong as his team starts discussing options with him and asking him if he would like to stay out longer but will have to overtake Hamilton on track which Piastri was not too keen on the idea. He ends up coming in on Lap 38 from 2^nd and comes out in 5^th with a good tyre offset but both Mercedes ahead of him but by Lap 40 he was right on the back of Hamilton, and he manages to clear him on the same lap to get after Russell. Leclerc also came into the pits on Lap 37 from 4^th and comes out in 8^th behind Alonso but manages to come out ahead Hulkenberg, but he has much fresher tyres and should find it easier to overtake this time. On Lap 41, Leclerc managed to make it up to the back of Alonso and manages to clear him at Turn 14.

At VCARB we hear Yuki Tsunoda get a bit impatient with the team as he started asking them what they are waiting for on Lap 40, seems that he was asking for a swap as he was closing in to Ricciardo and he was on softs, after another angry message asking them to do the swap they asked him to close in and they will swap and on Lap 42 we do see the pair swap. Talking of swaps on Lap 43, Ferrari relay a similar message to Sainz to let Leclerc through and Sainz obeys the order which frees up Leclerc and 15 seconds to Hamilton to close in. On Lap 44 we see Piastri close in on Russell and by Lap 45 he was able to clear him and Piastri at this stage had 18 seconds to Verstappen to maybe get 2^nd place.

At the front we see Norris have another brush with the wall on Lap 47 and luckily picks up no damage and on Lap 49 he gets the fastest lap and at this point he gets a message to put full concentration now after he managed to get the extra championship point to help in the championship battle. By Lap 50, Leclerc was within a second of Hamilton and ends up getting into the top 5 on Lap 51 as he gets past him and starts looking ahead to try and get 4^th by getting Russell.

On Lap 50 we also see Magnussen limping back to the pits as he seems to have picked up a puncture, he slowly made it back to the pits and after a quick change of tyres he was back out on track on some fresh softs, but he was in last place. Magnussen attempts to go for fastest lap and manages to get it but it seems that he had gone over track limits and fastest lap goes back to Norris as he gest some reassurance from his engineer to just bring the car home now. Magnussen on Lap 60 was then called into the pits to retire the car as there was nothing that he was racing for at this stage.

Leclerc on Lap 57 was now much closer to Russell and started to put the pressure on, but Russell was defending quite well as on Lap 61 Leclerc reports that they had good traction, and it was quite difficult to overtake even though Russell was complaining that he had both oversteer and understeer earlier on. Ricciardo on Lap 60 gets pulled into the pits to get a fresh set of softs on in an attempt to do Red Bull and Max Verstappen one last favour if this is to be Ricciardo’s last race and attempt to take that extra championship point from Norris.

At the end we do see Lando Norris come in to take the chequered flag by 21 seconds, followed by Max Verstappen, Oscar Piastri, George Russell, Charles Leclerc, Lewis Hamilton, Carlos Sainz, Fernando Alonso, Nico Hulkenberg and Sergio Perez form the Top 10. Norris lead every lap of that race, started from pole and had the fastest lap which meant this was going to be his first grand slam but Daniel Ricciardo manages to take the fastest lap off him on the last lap while also gets driver of the day as a potential fan sendoff giving him one last goodbye.

This was the first Singapore race out of the 15 we had that there was no Yellow Flags or even Safety Cars which is mad given how demanding this track is, which really shows the calibre of drivers we have on the grid this year. This was also the 9^th race in a row without the full Safety Car which is probably one of the longest stints in Formula 1. In the cooldown room when Lando, Max and Oscar were looking at the replays, Max said that at one point he thought that Norris was going to lap him, and he was also very surprised by Lando’s close call with the walls.

Who do you think where the biggest winners and biggest losers of the Singapore GP?  We now head into a bit of a winter break with 3 weekends of no racing before we return for the action in Austin for the United States GP.