Verstappen pleased with second spot in sweaty Singapore

Max Verstappen held off championship contender Lando Norris in the latter stages but saw his run of consecutive wins come to an end in Singapore.

The Red Bull Racing man, who has never won at the street circuit, never had an answer for race winner George Russell in his Mercedes but had to keep his wits about him, particularly in the closing stages.

After Norris clipped the back of the Dutchman at the start, pinballing into his championship leading team-mate Oscar Piastri, the Brit mounted a late challenge to close the gap to Verstappen as they negotiated lapped traffic in the final laps.

Surviving the DRS threat though, Verstappen was able to hold off the McLaren to claim second spot.

“It is hard to pass round here so I think second is the best result we could have achieved,” he said. “I think my tyres were older for the final stint, so it was difficult to manage, but we were able to keep Lando behind which is what mattered.

“Overall, we can still be very satisfied with the weekend, Singapore is not our favourite layout and we maximised our result today. We do understand the car a lot better, we have definitely improved in the last few races, we just need to analyse and hopefully next weekend we can do a little better.”

Team-mate Yuki Tsunoda said he had the worst opening lap of his F1 career. Starting deep in the pack, the Japanese was swamped at almost every turn, costing him positions and leaving him with an uphill challenge for the rest of the race.

Coming home 13th, he said: “Today's first lap was the worst one that I have ever had. I lost so many positions and just didn't have any space to move, every time I tried there was another car there which left no room for me. It was the same at every corner on that first lap when I was trying to overtake.

“What is really frustrating is that my pace today was really really good, the best that I have had since being with the Team, and definitely enough to put me in the points.”