Race Report: Fighting Sunday in Singapore Nets Podium for Kimi and Points with George

• Kimi Antonelli finished third with George Russell a battling ninth in Sunday’s Singapore Grand Prix.

• In a race shaped by differing strategies up and down the field, both cars were tasked with making positions on track in the closing stages.

• Kimi was able to chase down the McLaren of Lando Norris, having ceded track position under a Virtual Safety Car in order to move to a fresh Soft tyre, the preferred compound on the night, along with the Ferrari of Lewis Hamilton.

• That ensured that Kimi took his 14^th visit to the podium this season by claiming P3 and extending his championship lead.

• For George, the race was all about damage limitation having started P19 following a grid penalty for exceeding the allowed number of power unit components.

• He made good progress on his opening stint on the Medium compound, before switching to the Soft tyre to attack cars ahead.

• He successfully passed the Alpine of Pierre Gasly but, with overtaking a real challenge, couldn’t jump ahead of the Audi of Nico Hülkenberg and had to settle for P9.

George Russell

I managed to make good progress in my first stint and get myself onto the fringes of the top 10. We took the opportunity to stop when the Virtual Safety Car came out but sadly, we didn’t get the full benefit of that as it ended as I entered the pit lane. That type of luck sums up my season unfortunately! We fought hard on the Soft tyre but Nico (Hülkenberg) did a good job defending P8 from me.

We knew tonight was going to be a difficult race given where we were starting and how challenging overtaking is here. To get ourselves back in the points was a decent result but of course it has been a disappointing weekend here in Singapore for me. We will regroup now ahead of Austin and the final six races of the year. We’ve gathered a lot of useful data on the update package and hopefully we can build on that into the closing stages of the season.

Andrew Shovlin, Trackside Engineering Director

Coming away from Singapore with a podium for Kimi and points for George is a solid outcome, particularly given where we started the race. We knew overtaking would be difficult, so a lot of the opportunities were going to come through strategy and making the most of the tyre performance in the closing stages. Kimi drove a very mature race, managed his tyres well, and then had the pace to make the moves that secured the podium. George’s race was always going to be challenging starting from the back, but he fought hard throughout, made some brilliant overtakes and got himself back into the points.

One of the main objectives this weekend was to continue our evaluation of the update package and build our understanding of how to get the most from it. We learned a lot over the three days and, importantly, saw encouraging signs in both qualifying and race conditions once we were able to move closer to the right operating window. By the end of the weekend, Kimi’s package was clearly the faster of the two which gives us confidence that we are heading in the right direction from a development perspective. There is still work to do, but the data we’ve gathered will be valuable as we prepare for Austin. We now have a clearer direction on where the performance is and what we need to focus on to unlock more of its potential over the final races of the season.