Singapore GP 2024: Norris leads every lap and beats Verstappen

Lando Norris won the Singapore Grand Prix from pole position and led all 62 laps at Marina Bay, finishing 20.945 seconds ahead of Max Verstappen. Oscar Piastri climbed from fifth to third, putting both McLarens on the Singapore podium for the first time. It was the third win of Norris's career, in the first Singapore race ever run without a safety car.

How Norris won in Singapore

Norris took pole by 0.203 seconds from Verstappen in a session shaped by Carlos Sainz, who crashed at the start of Q3 and brought out a red flag that left most drivers with a single run. On Sunday the McLaren was simply faster. Norris led by 4.5 seconds after ten laps, stopped for hards on lap 31, a lap after Verstappen, and rejoined comfortably in front.

The margin hid a couple of scares. Norris locked up on worn mediums around lap 30 and brushed the barrier, then touched the wall again on lap 48 and answered with the fastest lap of the race next time round. Verstappen spent the evening alone in second, which at the one current circuit where he has never won counted as damage limitation.

The bonus point went elsewhere. Daniel Ricciardo, last on the road, pitted for softs late on and set the fastest lap on the final lap, taking the extra point away from Norris. It was his first fastest lap since Monza 2021 and his last race for RB: days later the team gave his seat to Liam Lawson. Yuki Tsunoda had beaten him on both days of his final weekend.

The teammate duels: McLaren, Mercedes, Ferrari

McLaren. Norris beat Piastri by 0.478% of a lap in qualifying, and Piastri had a nervous moment at Turn 1 before settling into fifth. He ran a long first stint, pitted on lap 39 and used the fresher hards to pass Lewis Hamilton and then George Russell, taking third on lap 45. That makes Norris vs Piastri 14–4 in qualifying and 11–7 in races this season on F1 Duels.

Mercedes. The split strategy turned the duel around. Hamilton outqualified Russell by 26 thousandths for third, but he was the only driver in the top ten to start on softs, pitted on lap 18 and rejoined 13th. He never found speed on the hards and finished sixth. Russell, on mediums, stopped ten laps later and took fourth despite clipping the wall with his right rear late on. He now leads their head-to-head 13–5 in qualifying and 10–5 in races in our count.

Ferrari. Their weekend went wrong on Saturday. Sainz's crash left him without a Q3 time and Leclerc's final lap was deleted for track limits, so they started ninth and tenth. Leclerc ran long on his first set, stopped on lap 37 and passed Hamilton for fifth on lap 50, but Russell stayed out of reach. Sainz, on his 200th Grand Prix start, was seventh. Leclerc leads the Ferrari duel 11–5 in races.

Elsewhere, Sergio Pérez went out in Q2 in 13th and recovered to tenth after undercutting Franco Colapinto, which still leaves him without a race win over Verstappen this year: 15–0 in our count. At Williams, Alex Albon retired after 15 laps with a car that was running hot; the team found a cracked radiator duct, so that duel is not scored. Colapinto finished 11th.

What it means for the title

Norris cut Verstappen's lead to 52 points with six rounds left, and McLaren stretched their advantage over Red Bull in the constructors' championship to 41 points. Verstappen has now gone eight races without a win. Piastri's podium took him to within eight points of Leclerc in the fight for third. Every verdict from the weekend is on the Singapore GP duels page.