Verstappen’s 2023 F1 title march stalls in Singapore

Max Verstappen’s victory around his home circuit of Zandvoort had him poised to become the first driver to win 10 grands prix in a row the following week at Monza, to put him clear of previous record holders Sebastian Vettel and Alberto Ascari.

When he duly delivered that Italian victory after patiently applying the pressure to Carlos Sainz’s pole-setting Ferrari until its tyres began to fade, the next statistical benchmark in the sights of Verstappen and Red Bull was to make it a seasonal clean sweep for the team. Given the superiority of the Red Bull/Verstappen partnership in the year to date, it actually felt more than feasible; it looked likely.

Yet that all came crashing down at the very next race, Singapore, where neither Red Bull could even make it to the Q3 stage of qualifying, Verstappen and Sergio Pérez wrestling with oversteer, poor traction and lack of tyre temperature. Given that this had coincided with a stricter application of Technical directives 18 and 39 (concerning flexibility of bodywork and floor respectively), there was naturally a temptation to link the two things.

Red Bull insisted absolutely not and that it was a Singapore-specific problem and confidently predicted how this would be evident the following week around Suzuka for the Japanese Grand Prix. That prediction proved accurate as Verstappen delivered one of his most dominant performances of the season and into the bargain sealed Red Bull the world constructors’ championship.

Monza

The first 15 laps of the Monza race played out brilliantly well for the tifosi in the grandstands as Sainz led from pole and kept Verstappen behind him. Ferrari had deployed the tiniest rear wing it could get away with and had been significantly faster at the end of every straight than the Red Bull which was using wing with a noticeably bigger flap area. With the DRS advantage over Sainz on race day, Verstappen was able to stay with the Ferrari in the early laps, but not quite get past.

“I think what you saw today is a bit of a coincidence where we had a lot of top speed with no DRS and Red Bull had just enough top speed with DRS, slipstream and battery to get to us under braking and that generated a good fun battle,” summarised Sainz. A few times the Red Bull driver would get partly alongside under braking into the first chicane, but Sainz was absolutely ruthless in deterring him from committing to a move.

Verstappen bided his time for he had seen from as early as the third lap, as the Red Bull’s tyres finally came up to full working temperature, that Sainz was already sliding. He knew it would be just a matter of time before the Ferrari’s rear tyres would no longer be able to support Sainz’s ambition. So he just made himself big in the mirrors, made it plain he was faster and waited.

Charles Leclerc in the second Ferrari was in turn able to hang onto Verstappen, using the DRS to pull himself along, without really threatening to try for a move. It was 15 laps of stalemate, but a thrilling spectacle nonetheless; Verstappen in a Ferrari sandwich, like a preying animal waiting to pick its moment of attack.

At around 12 laps in Sainz was beginning to think maybe he could pull this off. If he could just keep using the Ferrari’s straightline advantage, he could maybe stay ahead to the single pitstop and do it all over again in the second stint. It was a dream he woke up from as he felt the rear tyres finally giving up. Without the traction of the early laps, he was more vulnerable at the end of the straights. The car’s weakest corner was Parabolica and at the end of the 15th lap Verstappen got a particularly good run through there to place himself very aggressively in the Ferrari’s slipstream, thinking he would force Sainz to take a narrow angle into the first chicane, then get a better run out of there to pass into the next one. But, as it happened, Sainz made it simpler than that for him, by locking up into the first chicane, finally setting the Red Bull free. Verstappen pulled away so fast Sainz didn’t even get to use DRS on him.

Meanwhile Sergio Pérez, who had qualified the second Red Bull only fifth, had found a way by George Russell’s Mercedes and was now catching the Ferraris. But it took a while to get in range as Leclerc was using the DRS from Sainz to good effect. He didn’t put up too much resistance when Pérez eventually caught him – but Sainz did. If anything, his defence against Pérez in the second stint was even more fierce than against Verstappen in the first. But inevitably Pérez came past as the tyre grip differential between them grew the more laps they did.

“Verstappen pulled away so fast Sainz didn’t even get to use DRS on him”

Once the Red Bull 1-2 was in place, the race was enlivened by a gloves-off fight between the two Ferraris. Leclerc’s less intense defence against Pérez earlier meant his tyres were in better shape than those of his team-mate and he was on the attack. Sainz was no less committed in defence against his team-mate than he had been against the Red Bulls. His last lap chop across Leclerc’s nose into Rettifilo forced the latter to take emergency evasive action. That settled the outcome in Sainz’s favour, but it had been a no-holds-barred fight, albeit some distance back from the record-breaking Verstappen.

Singapore

The remarkable spectacle of neither Red Bull making it out of Q2 in Singapore (see panel, left) played its part in Sainz taking his second successive pole, just a few hundredths ahead of Russell’s Mercedes and the other Ferrari of Leclerc, with Lando Norris’s updated McLaren next. Even before the outcome of qualifying was known, Ferrari had informed its drivers that whichever of them was behind would be supporting the other one, not fighting him. This wasn’t so much a reaction to their fight at Monza as a sound plan for a uniquely promising situation: here was the opportunity to bring Red Bull’s run to an end, but it would require a co-ordinated strategy between them to thwart a Mercedes with better tyre degradation. Such is the almost Monaco-like difficulty of overtaking here that the way to run this race from the front is to set a slow pace, thereby bunching up the whole field, meaning there are no gaps for any potential undercut challenger (i.e. Russell) to drop into. Even better to have your team-mate right behind you playing rear gunner to continue with that backing up once the time had come for you to sprint away.

So it was important for Ferrari’s plan for a Sainz race win that Leclerc beat Russell off the line to slot straight into second. Accordingly, he volunteered to start on soft tyres for their better acceleration even though it would potentially be strategically disadvantageous for his own race, with everyone else up front inevitably on the more durable mediums. It worked perfectly, with the Ferraris already 1-2 as they exited Turn 1 under the floodlights.

Sainz duly ran a very steady pace and Leclerc ensured he wasn’t pressured. At one stage the race leader was lapping no faster than Logan Sargeant’s Williams at the back. The whole pack was just one mass as Ferrari’s plan was working to perfection. If Russell or Norris had tried to undercut their way past by pitting earlier, they’d be guaranteed to rejoin at the back, their races ruined.

Leclerc’s soft tyres weren’t expected to last much beyond 25 laps and Sainz was beginning to edge away ready for the next part of the plan. But a safety car on lap 20 (Sargeant had hit the wall and left a debris trail as he rejoined) changed the plan as everyone apart from the hard-tyred Red Bulls piled into the pits for a time-cheap tyre change onto the hards. This meant Leclerc had to be stacked and a further delay for traffic before he could be released lost him places to Russell, Norris and Hamilton.

But even with the pitstops out of the way, Sainz continued to compress the field. There were 42 laps remaining and the Ferrari’s tyre deg was expected to be heavier than that of the following Mercs and Norris’s McLaren so Sainz was keen to minimise the stress he put upon the rubber. Staying out as everyone had pitted had put Verstappen into a temporary second place but on his old hard tyres he’d been quickly demoted down the pack by new-tyred cars around 2-3sec per lap faster. He stayed out long, in the vain hope of a second safety car, before his dead tyres finally forced him in on lap 40, with Sainz continuing to thwart the closely following Russell, Norris and Hamilton. Leclerc had fallen off the back of this group as he sought to control the rising temperatures of his PU.

With seven laps to go Esteban Ocon’s Alpine stopped with a hydraulics failure, bringing the Virtual Safety Car out. With the pack obliged to run at the much slower pace dictated by the VSC, Mercedes decided to throw the dice with second stops for both Russell and Hamilton. On new medium tyres around 3sec faster than the old hards of the cars ahead of them, they rejoined fourth and fifth and quickly picked off the struggling Leclerc to set off after Norris and Sainz. They were on-course to catch them and with their grip advantage and DRS would surely be able to pass them both. This was looking like a Mercedes 1-2 despite Sainz having led from the start.

“Composed Sainz had one more trick up his sleeve”

But the composed Sainz had one more little trick up his sleeve. To keep the Mercs off his back, he would allow Norris to get close enough to use DRS. In this way the Mercs’ DRS advantage was neutralised. Russell almost got past the McLaren out of Turn 14 with three laps to go but Norris’s smart placement of his car kept him ahead. With Sainz and Norris working as a team to protect their own positions, Mercedes was thwarted.

On the final lap, Norris lightly brushed the barriers on the entry to Turn 10, luckily without damage. Not so the following Russell who got sucked into hitting the same barrier, hard enough to break the track rod, putting him hard into the wall. Norris and McLaren seemed almost as delighted with their second place as the victorious Sainz and Ferrari, but Hamilton in third seemed preoccupied, knowing that his below-par qualifying performance had cost him a very realistic shot at victory.

Suzuka

From the moment Verstappen took to the track on Friday practice at Suzuka and lapped 1.3sec faster than anyone else it was clear he was on a mission to re-establish the natural order of things after the aberration of Singapore.

He duly set pole position 0.6sec clear of the field. He was joined on the front row by Oscar Piastri’s McLaren, a remarkable feat on the rookie’s first visit to the track. He outqualified team-mate Lando Norris by a few hundredths. Most of Verstappen’s advantage was coming in the Esses, the long section of interconnected fast uphill sweeps. The McLaren was clearly the best of the rest behind Red Bull and with a handy performance advantage here over Ferrari and Mercedes.

Once Verstappen had fended off the twin McLaren attack into Turn 1, he was free to run his race unencumbered. High track temperatures had imposed a lot of tyre degradation and everyone was driving to the temperature of the rears in what was a two-stop race. But the faster the car, the more the driver could ease off on the tyre. In this way Verstappen pulled away to win by almost 20sec from Norris who in turn was a long way clear of Piastri, the rookie admitting afterwards that he still needed to better understand the nuances of tyre management in his driving at high-deg tracks such as this. Nonetheless a front row start and his first podium made it a great weekend for him, one in which it was announced that his McLaren contract had been extended to the end of 2026.

“Verstappen pulled away to win by almost 20sec from Norris”

Pérez had qualified the other Red Bull fifth, 0.8sec slower than Verstappen. He was slow off the line, causing him to be passed by Hamilton and Sainz. Two Ferraris, Pérez and Hamilton didn’t fit four-abreast and contact was made between Pérez and Hamilton which damaged the Red Bull’s wing. Pérez would be in for a replacement on lap two, under a safety car to clear debris from an incident further back between Alex Albon’s Williams and Valtteri Bottas’s Alfa Romeo. In trying to recover from his pitstop, Pérez locked up and hit Kevin Magnussen’s Haas into a spin, damaging another wing and bringing him in for a second time. He was later retired, then ‘unretired’ in order to take the 5sec penalty which had been imposed for the Magnussen incident. Then retired again. The contrast with his team-mate’s imperious performance could not have been starker.

Some way behind the McLarens, Leclerc had a lonely race to fourth in the Ferrari, ahead of Hamilton, Sainz and Russell. The Mercedes drivers had diced furiously in the first stint before the team separated them by switching Russell to a one-stop strategy. He was caught and passed by the newer-tyred Hamilton and Sainz in the race’s closing stages but was under no threat from Fernando Alonso’s Aston Martin which took eighth ahead of the Alpines of Esteban Ocon and Pierre Gasly.