The Singapore Grand Prix was our second victory on the bounce, a third win from four races, fourth in six, and fifth in total from the 2024 season. Unlike the previous four, the night race around the boulevards of the Lion City featured Lando leading from lights to flag, building up a sizeable lead in the first quarter of the race and holding that all the way to the finish.

Commentators described it as ‘easy’ but that’s not a phrase anyone on the pit wall, in the garage, or back at Mission Control would recognise. So just what does the team do when the car is 20 seconds ahead of the chasing pack from very early on in the race?

We haven’t had back-to-back wins for a while. Twelve years, in fact. Oscar’s victory in Baku created a brilliant buzz around the team: it was the sort of hard-fought, flat-out scrap that really gets the blood pumping - F1 at its absolute finest. Singapore wasn't like that. If anything, it was more tense.

In strategy terms, it’s a different sort of race when a driver is out front by himself. Philosophically, the challenge changes: in Baku, the team were working to overtake Charles Leclerc and gain first place, whereas, in Singapore, the task was to defend Lando’s lead from Max Verstappen.

So, what does that entail?

Oscar’s race

After a Qualifying performance he described as ‘not my greatest afternoon’, Oscar started P5 in Singapore, with ground to make up. Overtaking was very difficult, so his best opportunities were either to run with an offset strategy, or to engineer something around the pit stops. With Singapore being a locked-in one-stop race, his opportunities would be limited. In the final analysis, the team decided to stick with the mainstream Medium tyre start, and work an advantage for Oscar around the pit stops.

“We did consider starting on Softs, because through practice, the Soft compound seemed to perform better than it had the previous year,” says Racing Director Randy Singh. “…and particularly for Oscar, starting a bit further back, we also considered a Hard start. Both were viable, but ultimately, we were quite happy with the Medium for both as our starting choice.”

As the first stint evolved, it became clear that Oscar’s race was with the two Mercedes cars, as Lewis Hamilton in P3, dropped steadily back from the leading pair of Lando and Max Verstappen, carrying George Russell, P4 and Oscar, P5 back with him.

Had an opportunity for an undercut existed, Oscar may have taken that route – but the pack behind him did not fragment, and there wasn’t an obvious gap to drop him into: an undercut doesn’t work if the car is immediately mired in traffic after emerging from the pit lane. Hamilton pitted on Lap 17, and Russell went on Lap 27. Oscar ran until Lap 38, at which point his feedback stated the tyres were really struggling. Staying out that long meant he gave up an opportunity to box and come out in front of Hamilton – but in doing so built a big enough tyre delta to have the pace to pass both Mercedes on track.

“Lap 38 was as far as it was sensible to go,” says Randy. “We did think about running longer to the point where we could fit a Soft tyre – but we didn’t want to. We wanted to pit early enough that Oscar would have enough time to catch and pass people, so it was a case of finding the right balance. Oscar’s input helped us pick the exact lap.

“We had considered an undercut on Russell. He was struggling with his tyres more than Oscar, which is likely why he pitted when he did – Oscar was lining up for an overtake and I think we would have passed him in that first stint, had he not pitted. At that point we decided to not cover Hamilton, go long and pass them on track.”

It’s different out-front

Oscar ran the sort of race that’s been common for the team in the last few months: practicing good tyre management at the start of the race to build an advantage and attack later. Lando was in a rather different position: he started in front and, when asked to build a lead, had the pace to do so.

There are two ways to race from the front on a street circuit where overtaking is difficult. The first is to go slow. This compresses the field behind, allows the midfield to stay in touch with the leaders and, crucially, prevents gaps opening up into which an undercutting car might slot. The second, if you have a genuine pace advantage, is to take the more straightforward approach and protect yourself with a big gap to the car behind.

Once the start-phase was completed and the Singapore Grand Prix settled down, it became apparent that Lando had the potential to take the latter route. While Verstappen wasn’t dropping back, staying in touch appeared to be taking more out of his tyres in the dirty air. The team therefore asked Lando to push on and build a gap, with the target of a five-second lead in the mid-teens, as cover against a potential undercut.

“If I’m honest, we did expect Lando to have an advantage, but I didn’t expect him to be that quick,” says Randy. “His pace is pretty mega in that first stint. Once you’ve built a decent gap, attention switches to finishing the job and seeing it through. There’s a lot of focus on the engineering and the driving side to minimise lock-ups, stay away from the walls and all of those things that are common in Singapore.”

Timing the stop

Lando brushed a wall on Lap 29 and was well inside the window for a pit stop, but a quick response from the team in the garage and back at the MTC established that his tyre pressure was still good, and there was no obvious damage to his front wing. He was told to keep going – but then Verstappen opted to box, and so Lando came in the next lap. His brush with the wall was considered a sign that the tyres were going away, and the risks of running longer outweighed the advantages.

“Had we not had that slight issue with front wing contact, then probably we’d have stayed out a little bit longer, because that margin [25 seconds] to Max was more than big enough,” says Randy. “But, we had to take a look at the wing, and it just felt safer to a) check the car in the pit-lane, and make sure there was nothing wrong, and b) get Lando onto a nice, new Hard tyre.”

The instructions from Operations Director Charlie Hooper on the pit wall to the pit crew was that there was plenty of time for the stop and no reason to rush. Chief mechanic Kari Lammenranta was responsible for assessing Lando’s front wing before releasing the car. As is the case more often that you might expect, having the crew aware of the margin and being focused on their work meant that Lando did the fastest stop of the day. Stationary for 2.11s.

Lando emerged from the pit lane with a 21s advantage over Verstappen and it remained this way when he took the Chequered Flag 32 laps later. From the outside, the situation appeared calm and almost processional and that’s down to the hard work of the team, who, thanks to our extensive and detailed pre-race planning, executed our strategy and delivered a smooth race, in what was an intense and high-pressured, evolving, scenario.

The issue occupying everyone’s minds was the potential for a Safety Car. There had never been a Singapore Grand Prix without at least one. For the Race Engineers and Lando, the task was to make sure that, should the Safety Car appear and Lando’s lead instantly evaporate, his Hard tyres were at least as good for the restart as those on Verstappen’s car behind. The second half of the race for him was all about managing rear slips, practicing lift-and-coast into critical corners, avoiding under-rotation on corner entry and wheelspin on corner exit. Subjects on which he got plenty of advice.

For the strategy team, the task was continually updating the picture of the race. With only used Soft tyres left in the allocation, the task was to work out that ill-defined point at which that became a practical consideration, and when it turned into the better option versus staying out on a Used Hard tyre.

The tension spiked every time there was a close battle on track, and at the flag, the euphoria was tinged with a little relief, but the race was won. The result was the same as a week earlier in Baku but, compared to racing against a tangible opponent, racing against the nebulous ‘what if’ projections that exist only in theory can be even tougher on the nerves.

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