Charles Leclerc (Ferrari/2nd): “I believed in it right up to the end”

Charles Leclerc was unable to secure his second win of the 2026 season following his victory at Silverstone – yet the Monegasque driver leaves the race weekend at the Marina Bay Street Circuit feeling positive and with a silver medal from Singapore.

Ferrari tried to close the gap on eventual winner Max Verstappen (Red Bull Racing) by making an extra pit stop. The plan worked, and Leclerc did close the gap – but in the end it wasn’t enough for Grand Prix victory.

Leclerc/Ferrari take second place in Singapore

Leclerc’s verdict after the race: “Satisfied, but not over the moon. I think second place is a good result, considering that we’ve been lacking a little bit of pace time and again recently.” In recent races, Leclerc had finished fourth on three occasions, narrowly missing out on the podium in Madrid, Baku and Sepang. At Monza, he crashed out. Now, at last, a top finish again – even if it wasn’t a win.

Max Verstappen was too fast

Leclerc: “I feel we had strong pace, particularly in qualifying. In the race, Max was a bit quicker than us, which was to be expected, but we were perhaps a bit closer than we’d anticipated. So it was a great race. I believed in it right until the end, but unfortunately it wasn’t quite enough.”

Looking back, it was particularly close right at the start of the race, when Leclerc had almost overtaken Verstappen within the first few metres and got off to a very good start. However, Verstappen was able to defend his lead strongly, and there were no changes in position among the top six during the opening stages.

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Leclerc on the close racing in the first 200 metres of the race: “In moments like that, you don’t have much time to think. I just saw that Max had a bit of a difficult start. I had a pretty good start, so I pulled up alongside him. Then there wasn’t much room left, but I would have done exactly the same. Then it got quite tricky. I was on the left, a bit behind him, and couldn’t see the markings on the right-hand side – that’s when you lose all your reference points a bit, because normally you have the braking markings on the right. I tried to judge it as best I could, but Max managed to hold on to first place.”

The Monegasque driver kept pressing on. Leclerc: “Then there were a few opportunities in the first three laps when Max had the deployment problem, but I always thought it was a one-off, so I didn’t really use my battery, which was perhaps a mistake. And when I realised he had no power left at the end of the straight, there was nothing I could do. It was too late for me to use my power. But I don’t know if that would have made much difference. Perhaps it would have helped in the first stint, of course, but I think, ultimately, they were simply too fast for us.” In the end, Verstappen crossed the line first, 7.3 seconds ahead of Leclerc.