2022 Singapore Recap
In a race that was marred by rain and safety cars, Red Bull Racing driver Sergio Perez was able to escape late-race engine issues and a penalty to defeat Charles Leclerc for the fourth win of his career.
The race began with a delay due to rain that was too heavy even for the wet weather tires in Formula 1. Once the race started on intermediates, Perez shot out to the early lead as others jostled for positions behind him.
Max Verstappen, who could have clinched the title in the race, fell to 12th after his car almost went into anti-stall mode. This further dug him a hole that was already deep enough, thanks to an eighth-place start.
Perez shot out to a one-second lead over Leclerc and maintained that until the first safety car of the race was deployed for Zhou Guanyu being put in the wall by Nicholas Latifi. This safety car extended Singapore's streak of having at least one safety car period in every race.
After the safety car, Perez was able to shoot back out to the lead, this time extending it to around two seconds over Leclerc by lap 20. Perez’s lead hit 2.5 seconds after the second restart of the day due to a virtual safety car for Fernando Alonso’s engine issues.
Perez got the lead to over four seconds after two more virtual safety cars caused by first Alex Albon and then by Esteban Ocon. Lewis Hamilton made contact with the wall a few laps later but was able to continue.
Meanwhile, towards midpack, Verstappen continued to push past competitors, which included an incident with Kevin Magnussen that almost drew him a penalty. Verstappen quickly put this behind him and worked his way up through the pack.
Around the halfway point of the race, George Russell began to make significant lap time improvements with dry-weather tires. This caused a rush on pit road to change tires since no one wanted to be stuck on the track with slower tires on.
The tires did not work as well for some drivers including Yuki Tsunoda, who lost control of his car and hit the Turn 10 wall to trigger yet another safety car. Leclerc and Perez had both pitted and shot back out to the lead on the lap 40 restarts.
At this point in the race, the seemingly dominant Perez almost saw the race collapse around him. Leclerc began to gain steadily on him as he got temperatures in his tires faster. This was compounded by Perez slowing due to engine issues and also being put under investigation for a restart violation during the second safety car. Ultimately, Leclerc could get the lead down to 0.4 seconds but could not get the job done after a massive slide.
Ultimately, Perez was able to finish the race with a 7.6-second lead which gave him a cushion should he be given a five-second penalty for the violations. Leclerc came in second and points leader Max Verstappen was seventh, thus capping off an eventful Singapore Grand Prix.
