SINGAPORE — Ferrari's Charles Leclerc admitted a misjudgment on battery deployment may have cost him a shot at victory in the Singapore Grand Prix at Marina Bay, where Max Verstappen held on from the front to earn his first win at the circuit. Leclerc, who started on soft tires alongside Verstappen, finished second after taking advantage of a late Virtual Safety Car to pit for fresh softs.
Leclerc ran alongside Verstappen off the line after a strong start and stayed close in the opening laps while the Red Bull driver managed deployment issues. "And then there were a few opportunities in the first few laps when Max had a deployment issue, but I always thought that it was a one-off, so I wasn't really using my battery, which maybe this was a mistake," Leclerc said. "And when I realised that he had no power at the end of the straight, I couldn't do anything. It was too late for me to use my power."
He said he lost his normal braking references on the left side at the start and that Verstappen ultimately kept the lead. "I just saw that Max had a bit of a difficult start. I had quite a good start, so I went alongside him," Leclerc said. "I tried to judge it in the best possible way, but Max managed to keep that first place." Leclerc started on softs while Ferrari teammate Lewis Hamilton started on mediums, but Leclerc said a different strategy would not have helped. "If anything, it probably will have been worse, because the medium just didn't feel like a great tyre," he said.
Second place marked Leclerc's first podium since July's Belgian Grand Prix. He cautioned against calling it a trend, noting Ferrari has brought small parts that may have helped but that the team had been losing pace to Red Bull, Mercedes and McLaren before Sepang and Singapore. The result follows Verstappen's victory at Marina Bay, where Leclerc said Red Bull ultimately had too much pace over the first stint.