Max Verstappen converted pole into his first win at Marina Bay, finishing 7.3s ahead of Charles Leclerc and 24.6s clear of Kimi Antonelli. Behind the result were two contrasting approaches to the Soft C5: extending the opening stint to protect track position, or returning to the compound after the late Virtual Safety Car.
The lap-time distributions put Red Bull and Ferrari within around 0.1s/lap in team median, near 1:37.5 and 1:37.6, with McLaren and Mercedes around 1:37.9. These are uncorrected race-lap medians, not a measure of absolute car pace. Hadjar’s much slower distribution also makes the Red Bull team median less representative of Verstappen’s race.
Verstappen completed 32 laps on Soft before switching to Medium for the remaining 30. His fuel-corrected first-stint baseline sits roughly 0.2-0.4s ahead of Leclerc at comparable early laps. The fitted trend rises by around 0.06s per lap of stint, but this cannot be attributed solely to tyre degradation: traffic, management and evolving track conditions still matter.
The second VSC let Leclerc and Antonelli fit fresh Soft tyres on lap 39. At the start of the final stint, Leclercs fitted corrected pace was around 1:34.2, compared with roughly 1:35.2 for Verstappen on Medium. The advantage faded as the laps accumulated: Leclerc’s fitted trend rose by about 0.13s per lap, versus about 0.08 for Verstappen. These are observed pace trends, not directly comparable compound degradation rates.
Leclerc reduced his deficit from about 15 seconds on lap 46 to 7.3 at the finish, but the lead was never seriously threatened. Antonelli’s fresher tyres helped him exploit Norris’s battle with Hamilton and claim third. Hamilton, meanwhile, missed the VSC pit entry and completed a 44-lap Soft stint, eventually falling to sixth.
Pirelli reported virtually no degradation on the C4 Medium and strong durability from the C5 Soft, with no use of the Hard. Verstappen’s win came from combining a competitive opening pace with a long first stint and enough tyre life to avoid an extra stop.
