SINGAPORE — McLaren was crowned Formula 1’s top team of 2025 at the Singapore Grand Prix on a tricky day for all three main contenders for this season’s driver’s championship.
George Russell won the race in dominant fashion for Mercedes as McLaren secured the constructors’ championship with six races to go.
Russell started in pole position and stayed in control to earn his second win of the year, finishing ahead of Red Bull’s Max Verstappen, the four-time reigning F1 champion who held off Lando Norris of McLaren for second place despite struggling with car problems.
“We don’t really know where this performance came from,” admitted Russell, who said he’d expected Mercedes to struggle on Singapore’s tight, twisty street circuit.
It was a personal milestone for Russell, who crashed on the last lap while fighting for the podium places in Singapore in 2023.
“It feels amazing, especially after what happened a couple of years ago. It was a bit of a missed opportunity, but we more than made up for it today,” he said.
Verstappen may have got the better of the two McLaren drivers, but it was little help to his championship bid because he didn’t make significant inroads into their large points advantage.
Norris said it was “a shame” to spend much of the race staring at the back of Verstappen’s car, while points leader Oscar Piastri of McLaren was aggrieved over Norris colliding with him as he overtook at the start.
Piastri, who finished fourth, complained to the team over the radio about his teammate’s driving.
“Are we cool with Lando just barging me out of the way?” Piastri asked.
Chief executive Zak Brown said McLaren was just “letting them race” but the team’s hands-on role in managing its drivers’ title fight this year means its decision not to intervene Sunday faced scrutiny.
McLaren has intervened in on-track action before, including asking Piastri to give back a place when Norris had a slow pit stop in Italy last month. The team didn’t get involved Sunday, and Piastri made his feelings clear.
“That’s not fair,” Piastri said over the radio after being told McLaren thought Norris had been trying to avoid Verstappen when he hit Piastri.
“I had a small correction, but nothing more than that. It was good racing,” Norris said after the race.
The constructors’ title has been a foregone conclusion for months. McLaren’s 650 points are double the 325 of second-place Mercedes, but it’s no longer the overwhelming favorite each week.
Norris cut into Piastri’s lead in the championship standings for the third race in a row. Piastri now leads Norris by 22 points, with Verstappen 41 further back.
Piastri finished outside the top three in back-to-back races for the first time since March, when he was ninth in the season-opening Australian GP before winning the second race, the Chinese GP.
Russell’s teammate Kimi Antonelli recovered to finish fifth Sunday after a poor start. Lewis Hamilton was closing on the rookie near the end when the brakes on the seven-time F1 champion’s Ferrari failed.
Leclerc in the other Ferrari then passed Hamilton for sixth. Hamilton barely held on to seventh ahead of Aston Martin’s Fernando Alonso, then lost the place anyway after getting a five-second penalty for going off track while struggling with his brakes.
That lifted Alonso to seventh and dropped Hamilton to eighth, while Oliver Bearman was ninth for Haas and Carlos Sainz Jr. took a point for Williams in 10th despite having to start near the back of the grid for a technical infringement.