George Russell clinched victory from pole at the Singapore Grand Prix as McLaren clinched a second Formula 1 world constructors’ championship victory on the trot.
Russell built an early lead over fellow front-row starter Max Verstappen to present a significant advantage to ward off a potential undercut, and then preserved that through the race’s second phase through heavy traffic to successfully convert pole position.
Meanwhile, McLaren had to deal with a moment of contretemps at the start – where Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri made brief contact at Turn 3 – on the way to securing third and fourth. This proved to be a more than the necessary points haul needed to secure the constructors’ title; the Woking squad had needed 13 points to seal the deal.
Verstappen’s start on soft tyres could not necessarily nullify the disadvantage of starting on the dirty side of the grid, and had to fold in behind Russell into the opening corner – but then came under early attention from a fast-starting Norris.
Norris checked up at Turn 3 in an effort to avoid brief contact with Verstappen, and ended up clipping Piastri’s side through the corner exit as he barged his way though the order to move up to third.
The Australian overcame his fury at the first-lap skirmish with Norris to close up to the podium places, but couldn’t break beyond the two-second buffer to Norris.
Andrea Kimi Antonelli finished fifth after losing a couple of positions at the start to Norris and Charles Leclerc, but later passed the Monegasque to rescue one of the lost places.
Leclerc had later lost a place to Ferrari team-mate Lewis Hamilton when the seven-time champion stopped for a second time for soft tyres, but regained sixth when Hamilton ran out of brakes at the end of the race.
With a lap to go, Hamilton was 43.9 seconds clear of Fernando Alonso, who battled through a slow pitstop to make his way back up to eighth, but only finished 0.4s ahead in seventh as he limped home with no stopping power. However, Hamilton was placed under investigation for exceeding the number of allowed track limits violations.
Oliver Bearman finished the race in ninth place ahead of Carlos Sainz, who did a 50-lap stint on medium tyres from 18th on the grid to work his way into the points.
