Key events
And here are the drivers’ championship standings
1 Kimi Antonelli 🇮🇹 Mercedes 320 pts
2 George Russell 🇬🇧 Mercedes 236
3 Lewis Hamilton 🇬🇧 Ferrari 214
4 Charles Leclerc 🇲🇨 Ferrari 191
5 Lando Norris 🇬🇧 McLaren 188
6 Max Verstappen 🇳🇱 Red Bull 188
7 Oscar Piastri 🇦🇺 McLaren 128
8 Isack Hadjar 🇫🇷 Red Bull 96
9 Liam Lawson 🇳🇿 Racing Bulls 65
10 Pierre Gasly 🇫🇷 Alpine 41
11 Arvid Lindblad 🇬🇧 Racing Bulls 38
12 Franco Colapinto 🇦🇷 Alpine 27
13 Oliver Bearman 🇬🇧 Haas 20
14 Gabriel Bortoleto 🇧🇷 Audi 10
15 Nico Hülkenberg 🇩🇪 Audi 7
16 Esteban Ocon 🇫🇷 Haas 7
17 Fernando Alonso 🇪🇸 Aston Martin 7
18 Carlos Sainz 🇪🇸 Williams 7
19 Alexander Albon 🇹🇭 Williams 5
20 Yuki Tsunoda 🇯🇵 Racing Bulls 1
Yet to score:
Lance Stroll 🇨🇦 Aston Martin
Valtteri Bottas 🇫🇮 Cadillac
Sergio Pérez 🇲🇽 Cadillac
So, half an hour to go till the sprint race. Here’s the grid:
1 Max Verstappen 🇳🇱 Red Bull 1:31.156
2 George Russell 🇬🇧 Mercedes 1:31.276
3 Charles Leclerc 🇲🇨 Ferrari 1:31.399
4 Oscar Piastri 🇦🇺 McLaren 1:31.454
5 Lando Norris 🇬🇧 McLaren 1:31.587
6 Lewis Hamilton 🇬🇧 Ferrari 1:31.702
7 Kimi Antonelli 🇮🇹 Mercedes 1:31.849
8 Liam Lawson 🇳🇿 Racing Bulls 1:31.849
9 Isack Hadjar 🇫🇷 Red Bull DNF
10 Pierre Gasly 🇫🇷 Alpine DNF
Q2 eliminations
11 Franco Colapinto 🇦🇷 Alpine 1:33.249
12 Nico Hülkenberg 🇩🇪 Audi 1:33.420
13 Oliver Bearman 🇬🇧 Haas 1:33.423
14 Gabriel Bortoleto 🇧🇷 Audi 1:33.466
15 Fernando Alonso 🇪🇸 Aston Martin 1:33.734
16 Esteban Ocon 🇫🇷 Haas 1:34.368
Q1 eliminations
17 Arvid Lindblad 🇬🇧 Racing Bulls 1:35.136
18 Lance Stroll 🇨🇦 Aston Martin 1:36.130
19 Alexander Albon 🇹🇭 Williams 1:36.130
20 Sergio Pérez 🇲🇽 Cadillac 1:36.760
21 Valtteri Bottas 🇫🇮 Cadillac 1:36.868
22 Carlos Sainz 🇪🇸 Williams 1:37.376
The unhappy Sainz will start from the pit lane after some work done on his car in parc fermé.
Preamble
“F1 looks amateurish and incompetent after farcical scenes in Sepang” was the headline on Giles Richards’ Bahrain-in-Malaysia verdict, after the rain and the rules combined to leave the world’s fastest drivers calling the Kuala Lumpur AA for help. Surely, things could only get better for the FIA.
And then came sprint qualifying in Singapore, and human error:
After the first sprint qualifying session was red-flagged when Cadillac’s Sergio Perez crashed into a barrier, race control staff belatedly reactivated “overtake mode” for 27 seconds before switching it off for the rest of the session.
Overtake mode gives drivers extra power and toggling it on helped drivers who were setting a lap time at the end of the session. Reuters
It didn’t affect the championship leaders but Carlos Sainz (speaking before it was clear it was human rather than software error) was furious:
“Half of the cars did the lap with half a second quicker engine than the others. There was another software issue with the cars this time around and we were on the bad end of it,” Sainz said.
“For whatever reason, the FIA, like in Malaysia, didn’t decide to do sporting equity and were happy to do half of the cars in quali with higher power than the other half of the cars. So a bit confused why the sport keeps doing different things depending on who is out in Q1 or who is out in lap one.” Reuters
Reports that the FIA has borrowed and adapted Homer Simpson’s “days without an accident” sign from the nuclear power station remain unconfirmed.
Not that things have been much better at Mercedes, at least with regard to George Russell, who fared even worse in Bahrain-in-Malaysia than the FIA’s IT helpdesk. His engine failure meant nul points in that race, relegation to the back of the main race grid here and another penalty to come, as the new engine he has taken here will not last to the end of the season. Still, he has bounced back with second on the grid for the sprint, behind Max Verstappen, followed by Charles Leclerc and Oscar Piastri: four different cars in the first four. Kimi Antonelli – of whom more anon – is down in seventh.
Join me from 9.30am BST for the buildup to the sprint – 10am BST start, with qualifying to follow at 2pm.
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/sport/live/2026/oct/10/singapore-formula-one-grand-prix-sprint-and-qualifying-live
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