Verstappen’s streak ends in thrilling Singapore Grand Prix

Max Verstappen and Red Bull Racing’s domination of the F1 season ended on Sunday at the Singapore Grand Prix.

While the RB19 had won every race this season, and Verstappen claimed a record-breaking ten in a row heading into the night race, the team from Tilbrook found themselves on the back foot immediately in the heat, and struggled all weekend compared to Ferrari, Mercedes and McLaren.

Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz took the chequered flag to claim his second career victory, narrowly ahead of Lando Norris and Lewis Hamilton after a four-way battle for the lead in the closing stages.

In a shocking turn, neither of the Red Bulls made it to Q3 for the first time since 2018, with champion Verstappen saying even a fight for the lower points would be a struggle, though he recovered to fifth.

“I think we did the best we could,” he said. “In the end I was able to have some fun catching up on the mediums. For now, the target is to win next weekend in Japan.

“Everything needs to be perfect to win every race in a season, I knew this day would come and it’s absolutely fine.

“Everyone sees how dominant we can be and they don’t realise how difficult it really is, we need to get a lot of things right.”

While the Dutchman made steady progress through the field, team-mate Sergio Perez had an eventful one losing part of his front-wing early on, before having a collision with Williams driver Alex Albon late on, earning him a five-second penalty en route to eighth place.

He said: “It was not a great day for us, it was as tough as we expected it to be, we struggled all race and nothing really worked.

“In the end we were on a different strategy to everyone else and that was the best we could do. I think we have plenty of things to investigate after this weekend. I think the issues were circuit related and we should be stronger next weekend, let’s move on and look forward to Japan.”