Sergio Perez held off Charles Leclerc for his first-ever win on the streets of Singapore, while Carlos Sainz completed the podium and Max Verstappen finished seventh in an action-packed Singapore Grand Prix. Perez retained his victory despite receiving a five-second post-race penalty for a Safety Car infringement.

Heavy rain forced a delay of over an hour, with the formation lap beginning at 2105 local time, and although the rain had ceased, the surface was still slippery for the start of the race, when pole-sitter Leclerc lost the lead to Perez into Turn 1 and Sainz easily pried P3 off Hamilton, who went wide into Turn 1.

Verstappen lost five places to fall to P12 at the start but he made three up by Lap 9 when the first Safety Car was deployed for Nicholas Latifi and Zhou Guanyu’s collision. Fernando Alonso’s stoppage brought out a Virtual Safety Car on Lap 20, with George Russell then becoming the first driver to switch from intermediates to mediums.

Russell’s improving pace triggered drivers to begin swapping for slick tyres on Lap 35, but on the following tour Yuki Tsunoda went straight on into the barriers at Turn 10 to bring out the second Safety Car, before which most of the drivers had stopped for slicks. Crucially, the McLaren drivers hadn’t; Lando Norris came in for a new set of mediums and Daniel Ricciardo opted for slicks as they emerged fourth and sixth for the restart.