Ferrari ended F1 Singapore GP on a sour note after being plagued by brake issues throughout the grand prix, which eventually cost them places.
It was a mighty start from Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc in F1 Singapore GP when he cleared Andrea Kimi Antonelli on Lap 1 at Turn 2. He hung on until the end despite being hampered by brake issues from early on in the race. But eventually did not have enough legs against the pace of Mercedes.
He lost the place to Antonelli in the second stint when the Italian hurried him for few laps. Ferrari played team game as well by allowing Lewis Hamilton through, but the Brit suffered in the last couple of laps, which forced him to drive slower. It allowed Leclerc to catch and pass him to end up sixth.
He finished where he started. “Oh yeah, from Lap 8 basically, it was all about managing about those brakes,” said Leclerc. “I think everybody had to, to some extent like I did, but I was on the worse side of things. That’s made things very difficult, the whole race was very tricky.
Yeah, for five laps it worked well and then it was kinda poor, then there was no difference. Regarding team orders, I mean we spoke about it last time, I don’t want to go too much into the detail but we agreed on how we want to work forward, but obviously today we didn’t really show that because Lewis had brake problems, that it could have been the case, anyways.
“I mean I really don’t think that this is the biggest problem of the team at the moment, we don’t have the race car to fight with the teams in the front, McLaren always have the same gap to us like we had at the beginning of the year, Red Bull did a step in Monza, they are the same level of McLaren. Mercedes are the same level of McLaren and Red Bull, and then there’s us.
“Yeah, it is not easy obviously, you want to fight for better positions but at the moment we have what we have with the car and we just extract more,” summed up Leclerc. Teammate Hamilton couldn’t take on Antonelli on the start and was stuck behind for most part of the grand prix until the latter stages.
Ferrari switched him onto a two-stop strategy and the soft tyre run allowed him to cut on the gap to catch and pass Leclerc. He also chased down Antonelli and had the pace to clear him, but the brakes gave away and he eventually dropped back to seventh, defending from Fernando Alonso.
He cut far too many corners in survival mode, and was handed a post-race time penalty which dropped him to eighth behind Alonso. “Obviously, I was feeling really-really positive about this weekend, all weekend,” said Hamilton to TV media. “And then we got onto the soft tyre, I was attacking to close the gap. I got close and I was like this was crunch time, I saw that my brakes was getting hot, but they didn’t say that it was on the max.
“When I got to Turn 14, the sparks came off and the peddle went long and I stopped like to make the corner, then I had to cool the brake, then I started to back off, I just had to cool the brakes. I wasn’t getting the lasting advantage, also I didn’t know if anyone was braking deep behind, so I had to get out of the way. I don’t know, keeping Fernando behind was very tough.
“Overall, it was an okay race, I didn’t get a great start. It was very difficult to overtake and I was kind of stuck in position. At the end I was catching Kimi – as I said – and then brakes gave up. 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 back at the end,” summed up Hamilton.
What happened with brakes –
Frederic Vasseur: “Yes, we were protecting, not from Lap 1, but from Lap 2 or 3. We had to do a lift and post of the race, but even for them, at the end, it’s not easy to drive because you have to adapt your braking point each lap. Clearly, when we pushed a couple of laps with Lewis, I think the pace was decent. But we can’t do 95% of the race on the back foot. We all know that in Singapore, when you are in the middle of the pack, I think it’s critical for the brakes and so on. For sure, the fact that we didn’t do a P2 didn’t help at the end, but honestly, it was not expected at this point.
“Honestly, I don’t know. I think we did a couple of laps with them, but then you don’t know. Very soon in the race, very early in the race, we asked him to do a lifting and coasting. And it’s not just a matter of doing a lift coast when you are losing a little bit on the end of the straight. It’s also to find the right braking point. And all the races that we were a bit more, a bit less, a bit more, a bit less, a bit more on the rear, a bit more on the front. You have to change the brake balance.
“And at the end, you lose probably more on the reference for you when you are driving the car than on your potential. In terms of safety, yes, because we adapted the pace. It’s not that Lewis was pushing like hell in the last lap, but he was 30 seconds slower. In terms of safety, it was on the safe side. The target is to be safe, but the target is not to be 30 seconds slower.
Fastest lap –
Vasseur: “No, because we put a set of soft at the end. It’s a fake fastest lap for me. We are not in the same situation. I can say that when he was pushing, the pace was there. The gap with the cars in front of him was coherent with the delta that you have on the tyres. Nothing more than this. It’s also frustrating for us because we had the feeling that when we did three laps in a row without saving, the pace was not bad.”
Strong pace but unable to extract –
Vasseur: “What is mega frustrating is that the last two weekends, we came in Baku and then Singapore. At the beginning of the weekend, the pace was there. We didn’t extract the best from the car. I think honestly that we are doing 29.7 to Q1 yesterday and 29.7 to Q3. We are struggling like hell all the race to be on the back foot. For the team, it’s mega frustrating. I say the team, it’s team and drivers and for all of us because we are not pushing. At the end of the day, we are putting so much effort to be there that when you have to do all the race on the back foot, it’s sad.”
Strategy –
Vasseur: “No, I think it was the same tyres because we pitted in the same lap before that. Then Kimi, honestly with the same tyres who can’t overtake doesn’t matter the pace. He was catching up, he was probably a bit faster, but not with delta to overtake. The only way for us to do something was to pit and to catch up at the end with a big tyre advantage. Charles was in front and we had the position to put Charles, Kimi and Lewis. And the only way for us to attack Kimi was to pit.”
Here’s race start: https://www.formula1.com/en/video/2025-singapore-grand-prix-russell-leads-as-norris-jumps-up-to-p3-on-the-race-start.1845144149468310790
Here’s how F1 Singapore GP panned out