Lewis Hamilton endured a long F1 Singapore GP race at the Marina Bay Circuit. After qualifying only in P6, just ahead of teammate Charles Leclerc in P7, it quickly became a waiting game for much of the race. According to Hamilton, the race was simply “ok,” as a poor start immediately set him back. Furthermore, the added difficulty of overtaking in Singapore only compounded his struggles, making it harder to recover positions on the road.
Additionally, after the race, Hamilton incurred a 5-second penalty for a series of track limit violations in the latter stages of the F1 Singapore GP. Although he had been complaining of a loss of brake power, he managed to stay just behind Leclerc in the final laps, officially crossing the line ahead of Fernando Alonso. However, after being found guilty of “leaving the track without justifiable reason multiple times” the penalty ultimately dropped him from P7 to P8 in the final classifications.
“Yeah, it was an OK race, I didn’t get a great start, obviously very difficult to overtake and I was just kind of stuck in position and at the end I was catching Kimi and then the brakes gave up, so you saw the spark come out of the left front and then I just had to back off to cool them down. When I cooled them down they came back a little bit but still not following back there.”
Ferrari’s Qualifying struggles
Over the last three Grand Prix weekends, both Hamilton and Leclerc have struggled to find consistent pace in Qualifying, leaving them unable to secure positions that would allow them to fully capitalise on points. In Azerbaijan, Hamilton dropped out in Q2 with P12, while Leclerc crashed in the opening moments of Q3 and lined up only P10. Back in Monza, Ferrari looked poised to seize crucial points with McLaren struggling for pace all weekend, yet the SF-25 still fell short in front of its home fans.
Hamilton expressed sympathy to the team for showing up every weekend no matter what, yet he explained that the SF-25’s current package is not at the same level of machinery as the cars around them. In particular, both Red Bull and Mercedes brought upgrades to Singapore, which paid off with Russell claiming the victory and Verstappen finishing in P2. By contrast, with Ferrari’s focus shifting to their 2026 car, they are slowly dropping down the order.
“Yeah, well firstly the guys are pushing so hard each weekend, I feel pain for all the team, from catering to marketing to the guys in the garage and engineers who show up every weekend and they really do give absolutely everything.“
“But the car we have, it’s just it’s not a good level of the guys ahead of us, particularly as they’ve had some upgrades and we can’t match them, so we’re on a knife edge trying to get as close as we can. I don’t know, I think there was potential for us to be further ahead this weekend, I think in qualifying I think we’re still not extracting the full potential of the car, we didn’t in the last race and again this weekend.”
Potential for more points in future
Even though Hamilton finished in P8 after his penalty, he still believed there was potential to start higher on the grid this weekend if the team had fully capitalised in Qualifying for the F1 Singapore GP. However, the decision to queue at the end of the pit lane compounded their Qualifying efforts, making it more difficult to extract a perfect lap.
“I think there was potential to have been 3rd or 4th on the grid this weekend, if we had perfected, extracted the tyre performance and not queued at the end of the pitlane for example.“
When reflecting on the race, Hamilton noted that the team was on par pace-wise with some of the surrounding cars, but admitted they were not faster. He added that if they can address the Qualifying issues, they could potentially achieve slightly better results in future races.
“And in the race, I don’t think we necessarily, we’re kind of on par pace-wise with at least a couple of cars ahead of us but obviously not quicker. So I think if we can get our qualifying fixed, which is very very hard to do against these quick cars, then maybe we can get slightly better results but ultimately we’re still fighting for 4th, 5th, 6th at best.”
