Singapore was a sprint weekend, which means one practice session, a short qualifying on Friday night, a 20-lap sprint and a full qualifying on Saturday, and the race on Sunday. Verstappen took sprint pole, won the sprint from the front, took pole, and won the race from the front. The only session he did not top was Friday practice, where he was sixth. This is the whole weekend from our own timing data, session by session.
Friday: one practice, in daylight
FP1 was the only free practice, and it ran in the afternoon heat rather than under the lights that the sessions that count use. Russell was quickest on 1:32.274, with Leclerc 0.198 s back, Norris 0.273, Hamilton 0.499 and Piastri 0.564. Verstappen was sixth, 0.732 s off; Antonelli seventh, 1.251 s off. Russell set the fastest first and third sectors, Norris the fastest second sector, and Russell also had the highest speed-trap reading, 302 km/h on the median of his three best passes. Fuel loads and engine modes are not in our data, so a Friday order is only a Friday order; the week's forecast put thundery showers in windows before each evening session, with 24–34°C and humidity up to 95%.
Sprint qualifying: a red flag, and a switch that stayed off
SQ1 was stopped after 5 min 49 s. Race control noted an unsafe condition at Turn 5 involving Perez's car, and the red flag lasted 10 min 9 s. What happened after the restart is the part of this weekend we spent the most time on. In 2026 the cars have an Overtake Mode that race control arms and disarms. Our session feed shows it off from the restart for 6 min 8 s, switched on at 20:52:08 local, one second before the chequered flag, and off again 27 s later. Race control's own statement gives the same switch-on time and calls it an error in re-arming the system after the red flag.
So on the laps that decided who went through, most of the field had no mode at all. Nine drivers never had it available on their final lap: Hamilton, Leclerc, Norris, Hülkenberg, Bearman, Alonso, Lindblad, Bortoleto and Perez. Measured against each driver's own SQ2 lap, where the mode was working, the speed-trap reading on those final laps was 14 km/h lower on the median, 13 km/h lower at the first sector line and 7 km/h lower at the second. The cut fell between Lindblad, 16th on 1:35.136, and Stroll, 0.526 s behind him. Stroll had the mode for 7.7 s of his lap. Bortoleto, 0.894 s off the cut, and Perez, 2.694 s off, never had it. We cannot say any of them would have gone through with it, only that the six who went out were the six who, as a group, had the least of it when it mattered.
SQ3 itself was a clean fight. Norris set the first marker, Leclerc went to the top with 3:28 to go, and the order was rewritten after the flag: Leclerc 1:31.399, then Verstappen 1:31.156 for sprint pole and Russell 1:31.276 into second. Leclerc third, Piastri fourth, Norris fifth, Hamilton sixth, Antonelli seventh. Hadjar and Gasly both lost a lap to track limits and lined up ninth and tenth.
Sprint qualifying trace: every driver's best lap stepping down as the clock runs out, all three segments.
Saturday evening: a sprint in the rain
It rained before the sprint. The formation laps ran behind the Safety Car, every car started on intermediates and nobody changed tyres in 20 laps. The first lap did the damage. Russell, second on the grid, stopped on lap 1; our race-control feed does not name a cause for him. Stroll never completed a lap and Perez stopped on lap 1 too, and race control noted a Turn 16 collision between the two of them. Hamilton went from sixth to second on that lap. The Safety Car was out from lap 2 to lap 6; Hadjar and Colapinto were already gone on lap 2.
At the restart race control noted another Turn 16 collision, Albon and Bortoleto. Bortoleto's sprint ended on lap 6, Bottas's on the same lap, Albon's on lap 14. Then the order held almost to the end: Verstappen led every lap, Hamilton stayed second, Leclerc third. On the final lap race control noted a collision at Turn 5 between Norris and Piastri. Piastri, running fourth, stopped there; Norris dropped from fifth to eighth on that lap. Antonelli, Lawson and Bearman inherited fourth, fifth and sixth. Nine of the 22 cars did not see the flag.
Official gaps: Hamilton +2.591, Leclerc +16.871, Antonelli +17.238, Lawson +20.632, Bearman +24.321, Hülkenberg +27.525, Norris +28.272. Sainz climbed from 22nd to 12th, Bearman from 13th to 6th. Hamilton set the fastest lap, 1:45.457, fourteen seconds slower than a dry qualifying lap.
Sprint trace: position of every car lap by lap, with the Safety Car period and the retirements.
Qualifying: one lap, nine and a half minutes early
Verstappen set 1:31.373 on his first run in Q3 with 9:27 still on the clock, and nobody got near it. Hamilton went second on 1:31.496, then Leclerc took second after the flag with 1:31.427, 0.054 s short of pole. Antonelli was fourth on 1:31.562, Norris fifth, Russell sixth. Russell then took a 40-place grid penalty for additional power unit elements and started 21st, which moved Piastri to sixth on the grid, Gasly to seventh, Lawson eighth, Lindblad ninth and Hülkenberg tenth. Hadjar set no time in Q1 and started 22nd with the stewards' permission. Q1 had its own mess: double yellows cost Perez, Albon, Sainz and Norris a lap each, and six cars were noted for the maximum delta time, with no further action.
Qualifying trace, Q1 to Q3.
Sunday: 62 laps led, and a VSC that sorted the podium
The race was dry, 30°C in the air and 42–45°C on the track, and it was neutralised twice, by Virtual Safety Cars on laps 8–9 and 39–40. Verstappen led all 62 laps from pole and won by 7.335 s from Leclerc, with Antonelli third at 24.573 s, Norris fourth, Piastri fifth and Hamilton sixth. Hadjar came from 22nd to tenth and Russell from 21st to ninth. Four cars retired: Bortoleto on lap 7, Colapinto on 29, Stroll on 36 and Albon on 59, close enough to the end to be classified 18th. Our feed carries no race-control message naming a cause for any of the four.
Race trace, full race: every driver's position, lap by lap.
Two ways to run it
Eighteen of the 22 cars used two compounds in two ways. Seven started on softs and switched to mediums once: Verstappen and Norris on lap 32, Lawson, Bearman, Ocon, Sainz and Alonso around them. Seven started on mediums and switched to softs once, Hamilton earliest of all on lap 18. Four stopped twice, soft–medium–soft: Leclerc, Antonelli, Piastri and Perez. The two-stoppers' second stop is the race.
Lap 39: who stopped under it
The second VSC came on lap 39. Leclerc and Antonelli, both on mediums fitted around lap 24, came in under it for new softs. A stop at racing speed cost about 24 s of pit-lane time in this race; under the VSC Leclerc lost 12.3 s net to Verstappen, from 5.7 s behind at the end of lap 38 to 18.0 s at the end of lap 40. Antonelli rejoined fifth, Leclerc third, behind Hamilton.
Piastri took the same new-soft call one lap too late. He stopped on lap 41, after the VSC had ended, and went from 28.9 s behind Verstappen at the end of lap 40 to 52.3 s at the end of lap 42: 23.4 s for the same stop that had cost Leclerc 12.3. He was quicker than Norris on 30 of their 52 shared laps and closed from 29.0 s behind his team-mate on lap 45 to 9.2 s at the flag, but the chase had started too far back. Fourth and fifth, same car, one stop apart.
Norris and Verstappen stayed out on mediums fitted on lap 32. Verstappen's set was 30 laps old at the flag and still lapping in the 1:36s and 1:37s to the end. Norris lost 19.2 s to Verstappen over the last 22 laps on the same plan and the same-age tyres, which is a pace difference, not a strategy one.
Leclerc's 23 laps
From lap 40 Leclerc had new softs against Verstappen's eight-lap-old mediums. He set the race's fastest lap on the first flying lap of the stint, 1:35.202 on lap 41, and over the last 22 laps he was about half a second a lap quicker. The gap came down from 18.0 s to 7.3 s and then the laps ran out. Over the whole race the two were level, Verstappen quicker on 25 of their 53 clean shared laps and Leclerc on 28; the difference was that Verstappen's one stop was never cheap and never expensive, and Leclerc's second stop, cheap as it was, still cost more than the tyre advantage could buy back.
Hamilton's 44 laps
Hamilton ran the race the other way round: mediums first, then one set of softs from his lap-18 stop to the flag. The early stop dropped him from third to sixth; he came back through Lawson, Antonelli and Norris and, when Leclerc and Antonelli stopped under the VSC, found himself second on lap 40, 8.0 s behind Verstappen on tyres that were already 22 laps old. The softs lasted another dozen laps at race pace and then did not. Leclerc passed him on lap 46. Antonelli went past on track at Turn 1 on lap 54, where race control noted Hamilton leaving the track and took no further action, and Norris followed on lap 55. Piastri passed him on lap 61. Between lap 40 and the flag he lost 45.2 s to Verstappen and finished sixth, 53.188 s back. Against his team-mate he was quicker on 6 of their 53 shared laps.
The tyre-age chart says why. On first stints the soft was about 0.4 s a lap quicker than the medium at the same age and held that to 30 laps. Hamilton's set was fine to about 35 laps, and from there his laps went from 1:37s to 1:39s, 1:41s on laps 55 and 56, 1:42 on lap 61. Antonelli, who had taken the cheap stop, was quicker than Hamilton on 34 of 53 shared laps and finished 28.6 s ahead of a car that had been 19.6 s in front of him on lap 40.
From the back
Hadjar started last, with no qualifying time, stopped once on lap 33 and finished tenth. His 17 on-track overtakes were the most of anyone; the trace shows him through Alonso, Bottas, Bortoleto, Perez, Albon, Lindblad, Colapinto, Sainz and Ocon. On the same medium-to-soft plan as Gasly, who started seventh, he was quicker on 28 of their 52 shared laps, passed him on track on lap 58 and finished 12 s ahead; Gasly was eleventh, a lap down, four places below his grid slot.
Russell started 21st after the penalty and was seventh by lap 39, on the mediums he had started on. He stopped as the VSC ended, rejoined tenth, and finished ninth with 11 on-track overtakes. The first lap cost him two sprint points' worth of places the day before; on Sunday the only thing he could not recover was the 40 places. Bearman had the busiest lap chart in the midfield, 12 on-track overtakes and a run up to seventh before his lap-33 stop, and still finished 12th a lap down: this was not a race where a one-stop from the midfield turned into points.
The championship, by our count
Antonelli arrived leading Russell by 84 points. He scored 5 in the sprint and 15 in the race; Russell scored 0 and 2. By our count the lead is now 102, with six rounds left, and the earliest it can be settled is still the United States Grand Prix. Mercedes led Ferrari by 151 and scored 22 to Ferrari's 39 this weekend, so that gap is 134. These are our numbers from the two results above, before any post-race penalties.
What the data does not show
Our timing feed shows when each car crossed the line, when it stopped, and what race control wrote. It does not show why Russell's sprint ended on lap 1, why four cars retired on Sunday, or whether any of the six eliminated in SQ1 would have reached SQ2 with Overtake Mode available. The speed deficits in SQ1 are against each driver's own SQ2 lap, which was on a different tyre and at a different time of night; they show the mode was missing, not exactly what it was worth. Lap times in the tyre chart are not fuel-corrected. Everything else here is from the timing archive, reconstructed by Lapchive, unofficial.