Antonelli’s Title Lead Grows as Verstappen Wins Singapore Sprint

Max Verstappen won Formula 1’s last 2026 sprint in Singapore after George Russell crashed from the lead and the McLarens collided. Kimi Antonelli finished fourth and stretched his title lead to 89 points, while Russell scored nothing and will start Sunday’s grand prix from the back of the grid.

The 20-lap dash was the sixth and final sprint of the season, and the first Singapore has ever staged. Verstappen took eight points. The bigger split sat behind him.

Russell Led for One Lap Then Hit the Wall

Rain hit the Marina Bay Street Circuit about 10 minutes before the planned 5 p.m. local start and left standing water at Turns 2 and 3. The FIA called a 30-minute delay after standing water and sent the medical car out to check the circuit. Every car started on intermediates.

THE SPRINT CLOCK

1. 5:00 p.m. local: Scheduled lights-out for a 21-lap sprint is abandoned after the downpour.
2. 5:30 p.m. local: Two formation laps run behind the safety car; race control then sets a standing start and cuts the distance to 20 laps.
3. Lap 1, final corner: Russell, who had passed polesitter Verstappen into Turn 1, slides across the track and hits the wall.
4. Laps 2 to 6: The safety car holds the field while cars are recovered; racing restarts on lap 7.

Russell had the jump. Verstappen’s getaway was slow, and Lewis Hamilton vaulted from sixth to third off the same grid. The Mercedes lead lasted one lap. Russell put a wheel on a painted white line at the last corner, spun, and slammed the barrier. He climbed out and tapped the car with both hands.

I’m fine. Sorry, sorry, sorry.

George Russell, Mercedes, team radio

He later called it a miscalculation. More battery power than he expected pushed him wide, he said, and he touched the white line. Rule number one in the wet, he added, is not to do that. Silly mistake, big consequences. Those consequences ran past the sprint. He still has a power-unit penalty hanging over Sunday’s race.

A Bad Getaway Did Not Cost Him the Sprint

Verstappen said he had started in second gear and saw the poor launch coming. He still ended up winning Saturday’s Sprint around the streets of Singapore because Russell’s crash handed the lead back before the first safety-car board. He nailed the lap 7 restart, then managed the intermediates as the track dried in patches and stayed wet in others.

Nobody switched to slicks. Hamilton closed to within about a second around the halfway mark, then the gap grew as Verstappen stretched clear. The official time was 39:48.162. Hamilton finished 2.591 seconds behind. Charles Leclerc was a further 14 seconds back in third, his front tyres gone, holding Antonelli by 0.367 seconds at the line.

The start was horrendous again, so that’s definitely something that we need to improve on, because if you have something like that tomorrow, that’s your race over, if nothing crazy happens. So, yeah, not ideal, but then we got a bit lucky with what happened with George out of the last corner. And after that, we just wanted to keep it calm and under control, because you know that you can’t pass around here, and especially in a condition like this with the intermediates. So, we just tried to bring it home, and of course, I’m happy to win here in the Sprint, but I also know that I want to win tomorrow, not today.

Max Verstappen, Red Bull, post-sprint

On his own site he put the Sunday target in five words: I want to win tomorrow. He does not count a sprint the same way he counts a grand prix. The eight points still moved him to fifth in the championship, one behind Leclerc and seven ahead of Lando Norris.

McLaren’s Last-Lap Lunge Opens Fourth for Antonelli

Antonelli started seventh in a Mercedes he had called very difficult and unpredictable after sprint qualifying, with the team splitting upgrade parts between the two cars. He ran sixth after the restart, behind Leclerc, Oscar Piastri and Norris, and stayed out of the fight until the last lap did the work for him.

Leclerc’s intermediates were shot. Piastri and Norris closed onto the Ferrari. Norris had the better exit from Turn 3 and dived to Piastri’s inside at Turn 5. He got alongside far enough to make a pass attempt. Piastri held his line. The cars touched, both spun, and Piastri ended against the barrier on the outside. Norris kept going. Piastri did not complete the lap.

Norris told the team he was sorry, that he thought he was fully alongside, and that he ran out of space at the apex. Piastri said he did not see him there. Both drivers were summoned by the stewards. A last-lap pass on a drying street, on intermediates that were already going off, was a thin-margin move even before the wheels touched. McLaren left with one point instead of a possible nine if the cars had held fourth and fifth. Antonelli collected five for fourth, two more than sixth would have paid, and Russell’s teammate was the man who cashed it.

Norris limped home eighth, 28.272 seconds behind Verstappen, for the final point. Piastri was classified 14th after 19 laps. Liam Lawson inherited fifth for Racing Bulls, Ollie Bearman sixth for Haas from 13th on the grid, and Nico Hulkenberg seventh for Audi from 12th.

The Title Gap Is Now 89 Points

Antonelli came to Singapore with 320 points and an 84-point lead. Fourth was worth five. Russell scored zero. The Italian now leads the drivers’ standings on 325 points. Russell sits on 236. Hamilton’s second place put him on 221, 15 behind Russell and 104 behind Antonelli.

DRIVERS AFTER THE SPRINT

Mercedes leads the constructors on 561 from Ferrari on 418, a gap of 143. McLaren has 317. Red Bull has 306. The McLaren collision cut that constructors cushion to 11 points, because Norris’s single point was all the papaya cars banked.

Seven grands prix remain, including Sunday, and there are no sprints left. That is 175 points still on the table at 25 a race. Russell can still catch Antonelli on paper if the leader hits a run of zeros. He cannot do it with clean, shared Mercedes weekends. He also cannot do it from the back of a street circuit that is poor for passing, which is the grid he will have on Sunday.

Sunday Puts Russell at the Back of the Grid

Russell’s engine failed while he was running third in last Sunday’s Bahrain Grand Prix at Sepang, five laps from the flag. Mercedes had to fit a new power unit in Singapore. The FIA confirmed he is on a fifth internal combustion engine, turbocharger and exhaust, plus a fourth MGU-K, all beyond the 2026 allocation. Each extra element carries a 10-place drop. The total is 40 places, which under the rules sends him to the back once he is classified in qualifying.

The penalty applied only to the grand prix, which is why he was free to start the sprint from second. He has already said he will need another new engine before Abu Dhabi, because four units are meant to cover the year and seven race weekends were left when he arrived here. Singapore, he noted, is among the hardest tracks on the calendar on which to overtake. He would never have chosen it.

RACES STILL TO RUN

• Singapore, Sunday: 62 laps at 8 p.m. local on October 11, Russell last on the grid if he qualifies.
• United States: Circuit of the Americas, race day October 25.
• Mexico City: Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez, November 1.
• Sao Paulo: Interlagos, November 8.
• Las Vegas: Strip circuit, November 22.
• Qatar: Lusail, November 29.
• Abu Dhabi: Yas Marina, December 6, the season finale.

Antonelli has eight grand prix wins already in 2026. A quiet fourth on a weekend when his car was a handful, and when his teammate put it in the wall, is how a lead of this size gets built.

Eight Cars Retired From a 20-Lap Sprint

Thirteen drivers completed the full 20 laps. Eight did not finish. Piastri was the extra classified runner on 19 laps. For a race that lasts about 40 minutes, the attrition was brutal in the plain sense: more than a third of the 22-car field never saw the flag.

WHO WENT OUT, AND HOW

• Lance Stroll and Sergio Perez: Contact at Turn 16 on lap 1 put the Aston Martin out on the spot and sent the Cadillac to the pits.
• Isack Hadjar: Stopped with a power-unit problem, an engine-braking fault on the Red Bull.
• Franco Colapinto: Alpine retired with a technical issue behind the safety car.
• Gabriel Bortoleto, Valtteri Bottas, Alex Albon: A three-car clash after the restart, Williams into the Audi and Cadillac into the Williams; Bortoleto and Bottas out on lap 6, Albon later.
• George Russell: Accident, lap 1.
• Oscar Piastri: Collision with Norris, classified 14th.

Carlos Sainz started from the pit lane after Williams changed the car under parc ferme and still finished 12th. Arvid Lindblad spun to last under the safety car and recovered to 13th. Fernando Alonso was 11th, Esteban Ocon 10th, Pierre Gasly ninth after losing places to Bearman, Hulkenberg and Ocon in the first sector fights. The midfield points went to the cars that stayed out of trouble, which is the whole sprint in one line.

Why Qualifying Starts Half an Hour Later

Qualifying for Sunday’s grand prix was listed for 9 p.m. local. F1’s sporting rules require a three-hour gap between the end of a sprint and the start of grand prix qualifying. The delay at the front of the sprint, plus the safety car, pushed the session back to 9:30 p.m. local. Drivers go straight from a wet-dry 20-lap fight into a night qualifying on a street circuit with no extra practice in between.

Verstappen still has to fix the launch that cost him the lead at the lights. Hamilton has a Ferrari that can live with the Red Bull over a single lap and a race stint. Antonelli has the points and a car he has not yet made work around Marina Bay. Russell has a repaired Mercedes, a back-of-the-grid start, and 175 points left to make a dent in an 89-point hole.

Lights out for the Singapore Grand Prix is 8 p.m. local on October 11. The sprint trophy is already Verstappen’s. The title math moved the other way.