George Russell Tames Marina Bay While McLaren Clinches Another Crown

SINGAPORE, SINGAPORE – OCTOBER 05: Race winner George Russell of Great Britain and Mercedes AMG Petronas F1 Team celebrates on the podium with his trophy and Champagne during the F1 Grand Prix of Singapore at Marina Bay Street Circuit on October 05, 2025 in Singapore, Singapore. (Photo by Clive Rose – Formula 1/Formula 1 via Getty Images)

The Singapore Grand Prix isn’t so much a race as it is a rolling sauna on wheels. The Marina Bay circuit combines unbearable humidity with concrete walls that loom like doormen outside a nightclub. Make one mistake, and you’re not just out—you’re redecorating the scenery. On Sunday, George Russell didn’t put a foot wrong: he didn’t so much win the race as tame it, striding from pole to the flag with the kind of swagger that makes you wonder if Mercedes has finally found a bit of its old magic.

“It feels amazing, especially after what happened a couple of years ago,” Russell said, referencing his late crash here in 2023. “That was a bit of a missed opportunity, but we more than made up for it today. I’m so grateful for the team, they did an amazing job this whole weekend. We don’t really know where this performance came from, but I’m really happy.”

Happy he should be. From the moment the lights went out, Russell looked unbothered. Verstappen’s Red Bull darted in his mirrors early on, but the Dutchman’s car was having all the grace of a shopping cart with a bent wheel. “For whatever reason in the race I was struggling a lot with the downshifts and upshifts,” Verstappen admitted. “It was giving me a lot of pushing under braking, which on a street circuit you don’t want.” Which is a polite way of saying his gearbox had the manners of a sulky teenager.

Behind them, Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri were busy auditioning for a demolition derby. Norris muscled his way past, bumping and barging like it was rush hour in London, while Piastri fumed on the radio, certain he deserved his place back. The stewards didn’t bother looking—it was just “hard racing.” Hard racing that, ironically, would hand McLaren their second straight Constructors’ Championship by night’s end.

Zak Brown, grinning like a man who’s just found an unopened bottle of Pappy Van Winkle in his liquor cabinet, summed it up simply: “Pretty awesome. Unbelievable team here, unbelievable team back at the factory. Pretty awesome to go back-to-back; it’s been a while since we’ve done it.” For McLaren, the back-to-back title was the evening’s real prize.

The pit stops briefly shuffled the order. Piastri endured one so slow it could have doubled as a tea break, leaving him nine seconds adrift of Norris. Verstappen, to his credit, tried to mount a charge around lap 34, clawing a second out of Russell’s lead. But then came the lock-up, the near-barrier kiss on lap 37, and suddenly he was limping again. “Even if the balance would have been perfect,” Verstappen later admitted, “I think second was still the best possible, because you can’t pass around here. For more than an hour I had Lando behind me, and I think he was clearly faster, but you can’t pass.”

And that’s the rub of Singapore—it’s a beautiful circuit, but trying to overtake is like trying to dance in an elevator. You can shuffle a bit, but no one’s breaking out a waltz.

Behind the top four, Kimi Antonelli collected a respectable fifth, Charles Leclerc snagged sixth, and Lewis Hamilton brought home seventh—or so he thought. In the final laps, Hamilton was managing a brake issue, which meant he was wandering beyond the track limits like a man trying to keep his balance on an ice rink. The stewards were not amused. Post-race, they slapped him with a five-second penalty for “leaving the track without justifiable reason multiple times,” dropping him behind Fernando Alonso to eighth. He finished just four-tenths ahead of Alonso on the road, which meant the penalty stung like a hornet. Alonso was bumped to seventh, and Hamilton lost two crucial points for his trouble.

Behind them, Oliver Bearman delivered more for Haas with ninth, and Carlos Sainz salvaged the last point in tenth. Remarkably, the entire grid saw the checkered flag—no retirements, no big crashes, just 61 laps of strategic sweating.

So, Russell walked away with the race win, Verstappen kept his dignity intact with second, and Norris plus Piastri sealed the deal for McLaren’s constructors’ crown. Hamilton, meanwhile, went home with another fine from the stewards, proving that sometimes, even when you finish, you don’t really finish.

Singapore didn’t give us fireworks or chaos this year. What it gave us was something rarer: one man and one silver car looking untouchable, while McLaren, of all teams, quietly walked away with the big trophy. And on nights like these, that’s the story that will be remembered.

SINGAPORE, SINGAPORE – OCTOBER 05: Lando Norris of Great Britain and McLaren Oscar Piastri of Australia and McLaren and the McLaren team celebrates after winning the Constructors Championship during the F1 Grand Prix of Singapore at Marina Bay Street Circuit on October 05, 2025 in Singapore, Singapore. (Photo by Mark Sutton – Formula 1/Formula 1 via Getty Images)

FORMULA 1 SINGAPORE GRAND PRIX 2025 – RACE RESULT

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Greg Engle

Greg is a published award winning sportswriter who spent 23 years combined active and active reserve military service, much of that in and around the Special Operations community.

Greg was a writer for DriveTribe supporting Amazon's The Grand Tour and has been published in major publications across the country including the Los Angeles Times, the Cleveland Plain Dealer and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He was also a contributor to Chicken Soup for the NASCAR Soul, published in 2010, and the Christmas edition in 2016. He wrote as the NASCAR, Formula 1, Auto Reviews and National Veterans Affairs Examiner for Examiner.com and has appeared on Fox News. He holds a BS degree in communications, a Masters degree in psychology. He is currently the weekend Motorsports Editor for Autoweek and a regular contributor to Forbes.

Latest posts by Greg Engle (see all)

• George Russell Tames Marina Bay While McLaren Clinches Another Crown - October 5, 2025
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