Sergio Perez wins 2022 F1 Singapore GP, Ferrari completes podium

MANILA: In an exciting 2022 F1 Singapore Grand Prix, Red Bull's Sergio Perez defeated Ferrari's Charles Leclerc to claim his first-ever victory on Singapore's streets. Leclerc’s teammate Carlos Sainz completed the podium, and Perez’ teammate Max Verstappen, driving came in seventh.

Despite a five-second post-race penalty for a Safety Car infraction, Perez kept the lead and won the race.

The formation lap at the 2022 Singapore Grand Prix started at 9:05 p.m. due to a delay of nearly an hour caused by heavy rain. Despite the fact that the rain had stopped, the track was still treacherous as the race got underway at local time.

Pole-sitter Leclerc lost the lead to Perez into Turn 1, while Sainz quickly passed Mercedes Benz's Hamilton for third place after Hamilton veered off course into the same turn.

Verstappen dropped five positions to start in P12, but he gained three back on lap 9, when the first Safety Car was brought out due to a collision between Nicholas Latifi of Williams and Zhou Guanyu of Alfa Romeo.

On lap 20, when Fernando Alonso of Alpine stopped, a virtual safety car was deployed, and George Russell of Mercedes Benz was the first driver to transfer from intermediates to mediums.

On Lap 35, Russell's accelerating speed caused drivers to start switching to slick tires. However, on the next lap, Yuki Tsunoda of Alpha Tauri slammed into the barriers at Turn 10, bringing out the second Safety Car after the majority of the drivers had already stopped to switch to slicks.

Most importantly, the McLaren drivers had not followed suit. As they positioned themselves fourth and sixth for the restart, Lando Norris changed to a fresh set of medium tires, and Daniel Ricciardo selected slicks.

The Mexican driver kept the victory despite a five-second post-race penalty for getting too far behind the Safety Car.

Sainz, who overtook Hamilton at the start and ended third for Ferrari, finished ahead of Norris and Ricciardo, who finished fourth and fifth, respectively, thanks to their late Safety Car stops.

In a significant victory for Aston Martin, Lance Stroll and Sebastian Vettel placed sixth and eight, respectively, as they profited from mistakes made by Verstappen and Hamilton.

In an effort to catch Vettel in the closing two minutes of the race, Hamilton, who had previously crashed straight into the barriers on lap 33, locked up and slid to ninth place. Verstappen was ranked eighth as a result, despite the fact that he severely locked up during the last Safety Car restart. On the very last lap of the race, the Red Bull driver passed Vettel to take P7 from him.

With Valtteri Bottas of Alfa Romeo finishing 11th and taking softs for the last Safety Car restart, Pierre Gasly completed the top 10 for AlphaTauri behind Hamilton in the 2022 Singapore Grand Prix.

An incident on Lap 1, in which Haas' Kevin Magnussen avoided to crash to Verstappen, caused the Haas driver to pit and finished in 12th place. Schumacher, who sustained the aforementioned puncture while defending against Russell, finished in 13th place.

Russell, a Briton who started in the pit lane and had four pit stops, finished the race with the fastest lap and finished 14th overall for Mercedes.

Six competitors dropped out of the race. Zhou and Latifi collided early on, and Alonso retired on lap 20 due to an engine problem.

Prior to Alpine’s Esteban Ocon's engine failing to cause a double retirement for Alpine and Tsunoda's collision to bring out the last Safety Car, Williams’ Albon crashed and retired in the pits on lap 26.

"Yeah, it was certainly, I think, my best performance," said race-winner Sergio Perez. "I controlled the race although the warm-up was pretty difficult. The last few laps were so intense. I really didn’t feel it so much in the car but when I got out of it, I felt it.

"I pushed – I gave everything for the win today."

As Leclerc finished second behind Perez, he was left to rue a poor start that may have cost him the victory at the 2022 Singapore Grand Prix.

As Perez overtook him on the rundown to Turn 1, Leclerc remarked that his pole-position start "wasn't good enough." Early on, Perez and Leclerc traded fastest laps, but before they switched from intermediate to slick tires, Perez was able to distance himself from Leclerc.

Speaking about why he had dropped back, Leclerc said: “To be honest, first of all I think with Red Bull it seems like we have the upper hand in the first few laps and then they seem to… I don’t know, they struggle a little bit with warm-up but once they put their tires in a window, they are very strong.

“But then at the end of the race it wasn’t that representative. I was pushing until the gap was like 1.5s, but then when I knew it was 5.1s, I just kind of brought the car home, so the pace wasn’t that representative at the end. But having said that, I pushed quite a bit at the beginning of the stint and probably my tires were also a little overheated at the end.”

With Carlos Sainz finishing third, Ferrari sealed a double podium finish for the first time since the Miami Grand Prix, and Leclerc praised the work done by his team this weekend, believing they made the right calls in a difficult race.

“That’s good,” said Leclerc when informed about Ferrari’s double podium finish. “As I said before the weekend, we are trying to take those last races to improve our execution on Sunday, communication, and strategy.

“We’ve already done a few changes; it’s not been an easy race today, but I think we made the right choices, and for that I am happy. Then of course we will look into the start because that is where we more or less lost the race.”

Leclerc is now 104 points behind Max Verstappen in the drivers' standings, which means that regardless of where Leclerc places in the race, Verstappen will win the title of 2022 F1 World Champion if he wins and sets the fastest lap in Japan.

Photos from Getty Images, Formula 1

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