Max Verstappen holds pole position, which is extremely valuable in Singapore, but the win is by no means guaranteed with Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton lining up behind him.
What does Ferrari’s telemetry reveal that could make Verstappen vulnerable from pole position at the Singapore Grand Prix?
Can Ferrari’s race pace give Max Verstappen a Singapore Grand Prix fight?
Max Verstappen and Singapore have not been a great match, at least until now. It is the only race on the calendar that the four-time World Champion has never won, despite starting here nine times. Even during Red Bull’s total dominance in 2023, Singapore was the sole circuit where they lacked ultimate pace.
Crucially though, Max has never started from pole position here before.
In 11 of the last 16 races in Singapore, the pole sitter transformed P1 on the grid into a grand prix victory – a strike rate of almost 70%. In theory, Max has already completed the hardest part of the job.
Track position is everything on this street circuit. The layout makes overtaking notoriously difficult, as we saw during the Sprint race when Norris was stuck behind Piastri despite possessing visibly better pace. Drivers need at least a one-second pace advantage to make a move on track.
If the Ferrari drivers want a shot at victory, they must match Verstappen’s pace on track and force a move through strategy. And as the telemetry shows, the underlying pace of the SF-26 is very strong.
Across the 20-lap Sprint on intermediate tyres, Max was the fastest driver, but Lewis followed closely behind, averaging just two tenths of a second per lap slower. The graph above highlights how the rest of the field lagged a step behind the top two.
Moreover, a closer look reveals that the two-tenths deficit arose entirely from a mid-race drop in pace, when Lewis struggled with tyre grip. His lap times drifted after lap 10 before recovering toward the end, where he was actually faster than the Dutchman over the final four laps. Max, by contrast, delivered ultra-consistent times throughout the entire Sprint.
During that mid-race slump, Lewis was losing time exclusively in the final sector – specifically through the last two corners, where he bled up to half a second as we can see in the graph below. Across the rest of the lap, he was fully competitive.
Leclerc faced more significant struggles, though his initial lap times matched Verstappen and Hamilton. After lap 13, his intermediate tyres suddenly dropped off, causing a sharp decline in pace.
These pace drops for both Hamilton and Leclerc stemmed from track conditions and the unpredictable nature of intermediate tyres rather than any inherent flaw in the car. If conditions remain dry for the main race, the Ferrari drivers should be able to go toe-to-toe with Max on pace.
Strategy and the Safety Car factor
The start of the race will be crucial. A clean launch – like Hamilton produced in the Sprint while Verstappen bogged down – can completely alter the dynamic. But even if the lead remains unchanged into Turn 1, both the undercut and overcut remain viable options in Singapore, depending on tyre degradation rates at the moment.
Ferrari’s main strength lies in having two cars at the sharp end, giving them tactical flexibility. Leclerc could pit early to trigger an undercut and force Max to cover him, leaving Hamilton free to extend his stint and cover a potential late Safety Car – a frequent occurrence at Marina Bay.
However, Verstappen holds an ace up his sleeve: a new set of soft tyres saved from FP1.
The soft C5 compound is expected to be a viable race tyre, potentially running around 0.4 seconds per lap faster than the hard compound due to cooler track temperatures during the night race. However, the exact performance delta and degradation rate remain uncertain, as the Sprint provided no dry-running data.
Historical data shows soft tyre degradation at 0.11 s/lap compared to 0.04 s/lap on the hard compound, but the 2026 soft compound has behaved differently. At several venues this season, soft degradation hit 0.1 s/lap under significantly higher track temperatures than expected in Singapore, meaning degradation here should be far lower.
The Safety Car factor must also be kept in mind. With Safety Car deployments frequent in Singapore – and throughout the 2026 season – cool track temperatures will complicate tyre warm-up during restarts. Drivers forced to restart on hard tyres will struggle for temperature, increasing the risk of losing position.