Max Verstappen expands on defensive drive against Lando Norris in F1 Singapore GP after troubled car, as Laurent Mekies adds on what happened.
Red Bull’s Verstappen opted for a different strategy to start F1 Singapore GP, going for the soft compound in order to use the damp conditions and bad side against George Russell. But it didn’t work out in the end, as the Dutchman couldn’t get by the Brit at Turn 1.
In fact, as the race progressed, he came under serious pressure from McLaren’s Norris as he hustled the Dutchman all-through, even in the second stint. Verstappen had car issues to handle as well, where he complained about general balance and also upshift/downshift troubles.
The nature of the circuit helped Verstappen to keep Norris at bay, despite couple of bold attempts from the Brit. “Yeah, I think so too, it’s just super hard to pass around here, but I didn’t take the lead at Turn 1,” he said. “So, yeah, we knew that the inside just was a lot worse for start performance. For whatever reason, it took a step back even compared to last year, so it’s a bit of a shame, of course.
“I knew already that it would be very tough to even keep the position on the same tyres. Then, of course, with the rain as well, we opted to go for the Soft, just hoping that first of all we could keep our position and maybe have a shot at fighting for P1 into Turn 1. But once I didn’t achieve that, it was a proper management race, trying to keep those Soft tyres alive long enough to bring it to an acceptable lap to stop.
“Then, of course, I knew that even on a Hard tyre, it was still a long way to go. I think my tyres were six, seven laps older than George’s and Lando’s more or less. So, yeah, it was not easy out there. Plus the whole race, I was struggling a lot with the shifting — downshifting and upshifting — so that was not helping. And the balance probably was not where I wanted it to be.
“So, yeah, I think second was just the maximum that we could do today. But at the same time, even if the balance would have been miles better, second was still the best we could have done if we stayed P2 into Turn 1. That’s just how it goes around here. When nothing crazy happens with a Safety Car or an opportunity, then that is just your position,” summed up Verstappen.
Red Bull team boss Mekies expanded on their tyre choice as they had nothing to lose, but didn’t elaborate much on what hampered Verstappen in the race – noting to be issues of lower magnitude. “Look, in terms of single issue for the race, I’m not able to tell you,” he said to media. “I think it was very tough out there. I think we started with a soft tyre, we were one of the only cars, the only car in the top ten, or maybe only us and Isack [and Fernando].
“We did that to try to, obviously, maximise our chance to get George at the start. It didn’t happen. And I think that very quickly has exposed us to have more deg, to have basically a more difficult car to deal with. As a result of that, we pitted earlier, pushed very hard on the hard tyres, managed to close the gap. But what it meant is that most of the race, Max had been defending with older tyres and his competition.
“So it’s a choice of aggressiveness that we felt was necessary if we wanted to have a shot at the win. So the good news is that he did a great job at managing to bring the car back in second despite the pressure from Lando. Nonetheless, I think you’re right. Underneath that, there is probably a few things that we need to work on that were disturbing him during the race. But I would qualify them as probably something of a lower magnitude.
Yeah, I think you are right, it was tricky, honestly, because as you have seen, nobody tried the dry tyres at first. When going to the grid, all the drivers ticked on Inter, so it was tricky out there, even though on TV it looked quite a bit dry, it was certainly tricky. Then after, we felt it was the only way we could have shot at George, and we also felt that with the tricky conditions, it could be an advantage in the opening laps.
“As it turned out, and as you say, the track was a bit drier than what we would have expected, and we could not quite capitalise on George, and then yes, after it has a cost on probably the overall race time, but Max did a very good job at defending, both on the soft, and then after on the hard, we had to wait quite a while,” summed up Mekies, who felt the larger picture was Red Bull being able to be competitive on a track where they haven’t done well in recent past.
He feels they have unlocked something in the car to perform at such circuits, which will help them in future. “For sure, for us, being able to fight for the win here, it means a lot,” continued Mekies. “After Monza, Baku, it was very different. You never know until you are coming to the high-downforce track. So we’ve been able to be in the right rhythms from Friday. We were in the right rhythm in qualifying.
“It was very, very close to pole and we were in the right rhythm in the race. If you look, we finished a few seconds away from George. This is good news. It means that what we have unlocked is not only low-downforce specific. We will not change our approach. We’ll continue to take it race by race. We’ll continue to take the learnings.
“As you pointed out, there is most probably quite a few learnings we can make on this race, on some more small pocket of performance that we may be able to unlock for the future. So, Austin will be a very different equation. Again, it’s back to the famous mid-speed corners, where McLaren was also very strong here. Turn 5, turn 9, they have been very, very strong all weekend against us. And you have a lot of them in Austin and in Mexico. So we take it race by race, and then we’ll see.”
Verstappen concurred: “I think over the last few races we’ve definitely improved a lot. A few things that we have done throughout the weekend, that’s what we have to probably look at again for the coming races. But it’s nothing shocking or that we are lost about why maybe some pace has disappeared compared to what we would have liked. It’s just some stuff that we need to analyse, and hopefully next weekend we can do a little bit better.”
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 Max Verstappen defending from Lando Norris: https://www.formula1.com/en/video/2025-singapore-grand-prix-verstappen-fends-off-norris-attack-in-the-closing-stages.1845156945129037412
Here’s Lando Norris on Max Verstappen
Here’s how F1 Singapore GP panned out