Singapore Grand Prix Has Upset The Status Quo For Mercedes

The recent victory by Sebastian Vettel for Ferrari is part of a sequence of events that have created a free-for-all within the championship.

Before the last three races, Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton was the front runner for the championship, and he had a lead of close to a 100 points on the next contenders, Valtteri Bottas, Max Verstappen, Charles LeClerc and Sebastian Vettel.

It seemed his victory was assured going into the second leg of the season, but the Belgian Grand Prix marked the change of the tide.

LeClerc’s back-to-back victory followed by the Vettel’s in Singapore has illustrated Ferrari has cracked a code somewhere.

The Belgian and Monza Grand Prix’s were favorable for Scuderia because of the power straits involved on both tracks. These lent them advantage due to their power, so the expectation was a lackluster performance at Singapore.

Other teams like Mercedes and Red Bull were expected to perform exceptionally there because they did better on such circuits.

Interestingly the Ferrari team dominated the track once again. The result was attributed to the upgrades introduced specifically for the Singapore race, which will be default going forward.

These upgrades included a high down-force package which allowed more speed around corners.

Former Formula 1 boss, Flavio Briatore claimed Scuderia are revitalizing the sport which has been dominated for some time during the turbo-hybrid era by Mercedes.

Briatore also labeled LeClerc as one of the great talents but felt the Singapore win was something which Vettel needed at the time. This is owing to his disappointing performance in the previous Monza Grand Prix.

LeClerc was visibly furious following the Ferrari decision to pit Vettel before him leading to the latter’s victory. He was obviously eyeing the point status and the potential championship.

As for Red Bull, the Singapore GP was not the race Max Verstappen had envisioned. He went into the weekend as one of the favorites for the win.

Nonetheless, there was some excellent strategy which assisted him to undercut Hamilton, who was the other race favorite following the practice sessions.

That was enough to allow him to hold onto the top spot for the seventh race weekend while he also took home his best race score since Hungary.

Bottas, on the other hand, had a frustrating weekend, though he has not had particularly spectacular performances. He has managed a close second to Hamilton, though and obeyed Mercedes strategy.

It was to let the five-time championship winner slot ahead of him every time, so he is not a particularly prominent contender for this season.