Charles Leclerc finished second at the 2026 F1 Singapore GP, after coming short in his late chase of Max Verstappen by just over seven seconds – but the Ferrari driver revealed he “believed until the very end” that the win was on for him.
After starting on the front row, the Monegasque had a good jump off the line and managed to get almost completely alongside Verstappen’s Red Bull as the pair raced towards turn one, with Leclerc just backing out under braking and settling in for second at the first turn.
Leclerc lost braking “references” in the first turn battle with Verstappen at the 2026 F1 Singapore GP
Perhaps Leclerc’s best chance at getting ahead of Verstappen came at the first lap, when a good launch off the line put the Monegasque side-by-side with the Red Bull heading towards the first corner of the 2026 F1 Singapore GP.
But the Ferrari driver ultimately backed out of the move, later explaining that he’d lost sight of his brake references that are on the right side of the track, as Verstappen squeezed him just enough towards the left to compromise his line:
“I mean, you don’t have much time to think in those moments. I just saw that Max [Verstappen] had a bit of a difficult start, [and] I had quite a good start, so I went alongside him.
“Then there wasn’t much space anymore, but I would have done exactly the same.
“Then it’s quite tricky. I mean, I was on the left, a little bit behind him, [so] I couldn’t see the panels on the right.
“So you lose a little bit all your references, because that’s normally on the right that you have your references to brake. I tried to judge it in the best possible way, but Max managed to keep that first place.”
Leclerc realised “too late” that Verstappen had deployment issues in the first few laps of 2026 F1 Singapore GP
After failing to capitalise on the opportunity at the start, Leclerc was presented with another couple of opportunities in the subsequent laps, as Verstappen battled through some battery deployment issues in his Red Bull.
But the Ferrari driver admitted that he thought it was a “one-off” and didn’t want to overuse his battery to get close – and realised far too late that Verstappen was indeed carrying a recurring issue for a few laps, by which point he had lost his moment to attack:
“There were a few opportunities in the first few laps when Max had the deployment issue. But I always thought that it was a one-off, so I wasn’t really using my battery, which maybe this was a mistake.
“And when I was realizing that he had no power at the end of the straight, I couldn’t do anything.
“It was too late for me to use my power. So they just had too much pace for us.”
Leclerc: Starting on mediums would have been “worse”, as Hamilton proved
Tyres were a big talking point during the race, with the soft tyres that both Leclerc and Verstappen started the race on proving to be the best race tyre, as it was both durable and fast enough to hold off any threat from medium tyre starters.
When asked if a different strategy direction at the start woud have helped his case to get ahead of Verstappen, Leclerc quickly dismissed it – adding that it probably would have been even worse off, given the lack of pace of the medium runners in the first stint, as proved by his team-mate Lewis Hamilton:
“No, no, no, no,” he emphatically denied when asked about starting on mediums. “I don’t think it would have helped. If anything, it probably would have been worse, because the medium just didn’t feel like a great tyre.
“So I probably would have lost any flexibility to put Max under a bit more pressure around the pit stop time, even though he was still far.I think with the medium, he would have been further away.”
Leclerc “wasn’t overthinking” as his move on Hamilton “made sense” given the strategy offset
The Ferrari team have come under scrutiny in 2026 for questionable strategy calls when the two cars are together -most recently at Zandvoort, when, with a tyre compound advantage, Hamilton wasn’t waved through by Leclerc – and so it proved again at the 2026 Singapore F1 GP.
Hamilton was the first of the front-runners to make his pit stop, and overturned a nearly six-second gap to Leclerc to just a few tenths of a second as the Monegasque exited the pits – but despite insisting over the radio that he was faster, the seven-time world champion ultimately had to hold position behind his team-mate.
A similar situation happened later on in the race, this time with Leclerc arriving on the back of Hamilton’s Ferrari with a 21-lap tyre offset, which made his life much easier to get ahead, without even needing team orders from the pit wall:
“I mean, we were on very different strategies and I arrived with a much fresher tire. So I think at that point it made very much sense to not lose time between us, because I was still in the chase of Max and trying to win the race,” he explained.
“Even though it was a long shot, we had to put all our chances on our side. So I wasn’t particularly overthinking it. I had a very strong tire advantage and Lewis didn’t make my life difficult because it was very clear that as a team, we couldn’t lose too much time.”
Leclerc “believed until the very end” despite Red Bull’s pace advantage in 2026 F1 Singapore GP
After getting ahead of Hamilton, Leclerc began chasing long-time race leader Max Verstappen, after the Dutchman hadn’t taken the opportunity to pit under the late VSC and stayed out on 7-lap older medium tyres, compared to Leclerc’s softs.
The Monegasque started to take chunks of time out of Verstappen’s 14-second lead, and managed to nearly halve it by the end of the Grand prix, but it just “wasn’t enough“:
“Well, I mean, happy, but not super happy,” he said. “I mean, second place is a good result, I think, considering the last the tendency that we’ve had lately, where we were lacking just a little bit of pace.
“I feel like, at least particularly in qualifying yesterday, we had a strong pace.
“Today in the race, Max had a bit more pace than we did, which was expected, but we were maybe a little bit closer than what we expected as well.
“So it was a cool race. I believed in it until the very end, but unfortunately, it wasn’t quite enough.”
After the 2026 Singapore GP, Leclerc is in fifth place in the F1 drivers’ championship, after losing a place to Verstappen following the Dutchman’s rise in performance over the last few rounds.
