Ferrari cut Red Bull's record winning streak

The race on the streets of Singapore took place excitingly for nearly two hours with one appearance of the safety car, one competition under the virtual safety car status and a series of fierce duels on the track. Those developments contributed to a dreamlike ending for Ferrari and Sainz, when the Spanish driver finished first with 1 hour 46 minutes 37.418 seconds.

This is Sainz's second victory in the colors of the famous Italian racing team. Thereby, he and Ferrari interrupted the winning streak of Verstappen and Red Bull in the last 10 races, since George Russell finished first in the Sao Paulo Grand Prix - the penultimate race of last season.

"Ferrari dominated the qualifying rounds and then completed the main race well. We did everything perfectly. During the main race, I found myself always in control of everything, relaxed and assured because The car's speed is enough for me to do whatever I want. I'm over the moon with today's victory," Sainz said after the race.

Sainz did not exaggerate, because the reality showed that he expertly controlled the racing team right from the start. On the contrary, unlike usual, Verstappen struggled throughout the race to finish fifth overall from an 11th starting position in a difficult race for Red Bull. At the end of the race, Sainz successfully defended the lead against suffocating pressure from McLaren's Lando Norris and especially Mercedes team George Russell and Lewis Hamilton.

That pressure on Sainz was only relieved when George Russell had an accident and fell to the sidelines in the last lap. Previously, Russell and Hamilton successfully ventured into the 2-pit strategy by taking advantage of the safety car's appearance to change tires. The Mercedes duo even almost beat Sainz and Norris thanks to the advantage of a new set of tires. But the difficulty of overtaking on the Singapore street race prevented the two British drivers from breaking through in the final laps.

Right from the beginning of the race, when seeing Red Bull's instability, Ferrari clearly understood that the Singapore Grand Prix was a golden opportunity for them to come first. The Italian team entered the race determined to win and implemented every possible strategy to do so, even sacrificing Sainz's teammate - Charles Leclerc - to keep the Spanish driver in first place. ..

Leclerc, who started third, was the only driver in the top 10 cars to start on soft tires. And this risk paid off when the Monaco driver overtook Russell at the start. Above, Sainz controlled the speed of the racing group, while Leclerc was asked by Ferrari to hold back the following group and create a safe distance of 5 seconds with his teammate above, to avoid the risk of Sainz jumping.

Leclerc failed to fulfill most of the home team's requests. The gap between the two leading riders was maintained at 1 second for the first 10 laps, then gradually widened to about three seconds. But nonetheless, Leclerc has supported Sainz significantly since the safety car was deployed in lap 20. Leclerc has well restrained the speed of the racing group in this lap, keeping the remaining cars behind, and Sainz had a nine-second safety gap right before pitting for his first tire change at the end of that lap.

Leclerc's sacrifice helped Sainz, who got back on track well into the lead, but left Leclerc vulnerable. The Monaco driver fell behind Russell, Norris and Hamilton, before having enough strength to return to the track because Ferrari had to keep Leclerc in the technical area to avoid the risk of unsafety due to a series of cars rushing through the area. Ferrari engineering.

When the safety car withdrew from the track, Sainz was leading just ahead of Verstappen - who moved up to second due to not changing tires when the safety car appeared. Red Bull expected the safety car to appear soon for the second time before entering the pit, but the world champion's old hard tires left him much behind in speed and was quickly attacked and overtaken by a series of racers.

Russell, who was now behind Sainz, told his team that he noticed that the Ferrari driver was maintaining his speed to keep the tires in case Mercedes made another tire change to the new set of medium tires that were only available to the team. German racing to save for the race.

When Esteban Ocon's Alpine crashed and had to stop at the pit-lane exit on lap 43, a virtual safety car was declared. Mercedes took advantage of the opportunity to call both Russell and Hamilton to pit a second time to switch to new medium tires as predicted by Ferrari. Russell returned to the track in fourth position, only about 15 seconds behind Leclerc, with Hamilton in fifth position.

With the huge advantage from the new medium tires, the Mercedes duo continuously accelerated and soon caught up with the cars above. Russell overtook Leclerc on lap 54, then began to narrow and catch up with Norris, Sainz in front. Hamilton also ran right behind his teammate and seemed to have even better speed.

When there were about five laps left in the race, Sainz deliberately slowed down to reduce the gap to help Norris use the DRS spoiler to defend against pressure from the Mercedes duo. In lap 59, Russell inched ahead of Norris at corner 16, but the McLaren driver guessed his intentions and successfully defended and maintained second place when exiting the corner.

After that, Russell never had the strength to attack, and even had a mishap when the W14 crashed into the wall at Turn 10 on the final lap. Sainz, Norris and Hamilton comfortably crossed the finish line with a gap between the cars of only about one second.

"What a sad result after such a great performance," Russell said, choking up after the race. "The qualifying round was favorable, the race was exciting, we followed our bold strategy well, but I feel like we let down our teammates. It was difficult but we will come back."

Contrary to Ferrari and Mercedes, Red Bull did not have the race they wanted. Disadvantaged early from the practice sessions and qualifying rounds, Verstappen started the race on hard tires, aiming to run a long distance on the starting tires and hoping to overtake the cars in front when they stopped to change tires. The Dutch driver rose from 11th to 8th in the first few laps, then got stuck after the battle between Alonso and Ocon.

Thanks to not changing tires when the safety car appeared on lap 20, Verstappen jumped to second behind Sainz. The defending champion could have even taken the lead if Leclerc had not slowed down too much. But the early tire difference caused Verstappen to fall behind and when he returned to the pits on lap 40 to get new tires, Red Bull's main driver fell to 15th place.

But Verstappen remained patient and overtook the slower cars ahead on fresher tires. Towards the end of the race, the RB19 put pressure on Leclerc, but there was not enough time left to attack. In fifth, Verstappen is currently 151 points ahead of teammate Sergio Perez in the individual rankings, which means the Dutch driver cannot yet be crowned world champion at the Japanese Grand Prix at Suzuka next weekend.