The 2024 Singapore Grand Prix may have bored fans with little action, but there was still plenty to learn.
Lando Norris led every lap to take his third Grand Prix victory at the Marina Bay Street Circuit, having taken pole position the day before.
62 laps later, not much had happened and Norris’ dominant victory brought him another small dent in Max Verstappen’s championship lead, although the Dutch driver finished in second place.
But during those laps, what did we learn?
Norris maturing as a driver
The 2024 Singapore Grand Prix marked the first time, in six starts from pole position, that Norris has retained the lead of the race on the first lap.
From there, after maintaining his lead over Verstappen on Lap 1, the British driver went on to lead every single lap of the race. He ended Lap 62 a dominant 20.945s ahead of Verstappen.
While he didn’t have much competition, the drive still showed a level of growing maturity that Norris will need if he wants to continue to challenge Verstappen for the championship. His history of never retaining the lead on the first lap of a race was a blight on his record that he’ll be relieved to have finally beaten.
It’s yet another mark this season that he’s ready for a championship challenge. He won his first race earlier this year in Miami, he’s already scored more podium finishes this year than any other season, and now he’s won a race from pole while leading every single lap.
There are still 52 points between Verstappen and Norris in the title fight, with only six races left in the season. It’ll take more than Norris winning a few more races, with Verstappen still finishing close behind, but Norris is slowly but surely proving he has what it takes to put up a fight.
Ricciardo’s last hurrah
All the signs point to the Singapore Grand Prix being Daniel Ricciardo’s last race in Formula 1. After stepping up to Visa CashApp RB (then called Alpha Tauri) in the middle of last season to replace Nyck de Vries, he may be looking at the end of his Formula 1 career.
With 12 points to his name so far this season, Ricciardo sits 14th in the championship, behind Alex Albon and ten points behind his teammate Yuki Tsunoda.
Rumours have been flying about his inevitable replacement, and it was an open secret headed into the weekend that Liam Lawson would soon be taking his seat.
Speaking to Motorsport.com after the race, Ricciardo commented: “I tried to obviously enjoy it [the Singapore Grand Prix weekend], a little bit like the end of ’22 with McLaren.
“Obviously, I was aware maybe that was my last race, so I tried to enjoy that. I think I’m in a much happier place now in the sport than I was then. So, if this is it, let’s say I have a little bit more peace and I’m proud of the career.”
The Lawson announcement is expected any day now, with Ricciardo and everyone else well aware that this race will almost certainly be his last in Formula 1.
Sister teams bring controversy
A few laps before the end of the race, Ricciardo pitted and scored the fastest lap on the final lap of the race. While the RB team maintains that their reasoning was that it would be a nice send-off for Ricciardo’s last race, others are skeptical.
Norris held the fastest lap for McLaren before Ricciardo took it away. While Ricciardo was running in 18th place and would be unable to take the point for fastest lap, he did take it away from both Norris and McLaren.
RB is Red Bull’s sister team, and this isn’t the first time that they’ve been accused of specifically acting to help Red Bull in the title fight. Since Red Bull is the only team on the grid that even has a sister team, questions of whether or not it’s fair have arisen.
Ultimately, there’s no way to prove that RB was acting specifically to help Red Bull by taking away a point from McLaren. But it could be looked into in the future, whether Red Bull is allowed to even have an affiliated team on the grid when no one else is allowed to benefit from one.
Williams made the right choice
It’s been three races now since Williams Racing replaced Logan Sargeant with Franco Colapinto. And in those three races he’s proved comprehensively that they made the right choice.
In his first race weekend, he finished 12th. In his second, he out-qualified Albon and scored points. And in Singapore, he qualified 12th (less than a tenth behind Albon) and finished 11th.
Colapinto sits 19th in the standings, ahead of Sargeant as well as both full-time Kick Sauber drivers. In all three races he’s been close to Albon on pace and finished in or close to the points, the very thing Williams was hoping he would do. Even though he’s just a short-term solution as Carlos Sainz will come into the team to join Albon next season, he’s done exactly what he needed to do both for Williams and for his career.
Are drivers playing it too safe?
The 2024 Singapore Grand Prix marked the first time in Formula 1 history that the race was completed without a Safety Car.
Both Albon and Kevin Magnussen retired at different stages in the race with issues, but both managed to get back into the pits and end their race quietly.
It’s good to see a race go by without any big incidents as a big win for the safety of the sport, but admittedly, some more on-track action would have been good to see.
Is a race without a Safety Car at a track that always sees at least one Safety Car a cause for celebration? Or is it a mark of the era of Formula 1 that we’re in, where drivers are either too cautious or too far away from the competition to even attempt some fighting?
Feature Image Credit: @F1 on X