SINGAPORE — Scuderia Ferrari pushed Red Bull Racing to the absolute limit under the Marina Bay floodlights as Charles Leclerc had to settle for second place at the 2026 Singapore Grand Prix behind polesitter Max Verstappen, with Mercedes rookie Andrea Kimi Antonelli completing the podium in third. Starting from the front row alongside Verstappen, Leclerc applied relentless pressure throughout the opening stint before high tyre degradation and a divergent, aggressive pit strategy under a mid-race safety car left him short of rubber in the closing laps.
Speaking with Jenson Button immediately after stepping out of the cockpit, Leclerc broke down how a promising opening phase unravelled into severe tyre management. "Yeah, we were quite strong at the beginning of the race, then we started degrading a little bit more in the first stint, but then we did a slightly different strategy to Max with the safety car," Leclerc explained.
Rather than settling into a rhythm behind Verstappen at the restart, Leclerc threw caution to the wind by attacking immediately. "I believed in it until the very end, but I pushed a lot at the beginning of that last stint and then degraded a bit more than the others," Leclerc conceded. "But yeah, I gave it all, and I don't regret anything. I don't think there was much more to do today, apart from maybe a bit more aggressive at the start. That's the way it is."
Despite finishing comfortably ahead of both Mercedes and McLaren to deliver a massive points haul for Ferrari in the Constructors' standings, Leclerc was quick to temper expectations when asked if Maranello had eliminated the deficit to Red Bull. "Yeah, I still feel that way," Leclerc stated regarding Ferrari's pace disadvantage. "However, it's true that we brought some small new parts to the car, which maybe helped us to do another step forward, but it's not an awful push until the end, and we still got to bring some new things to the car to be at that level. But I think today we had a good pace overall."
Ferrari's minor aerodynamic tweaks proved they can challenge on low-speed street layouts, but Leclerc made clear Maranello will need a much larger development package to beat Verstappen on high-speed, front-limited circuits with six rounds remaining and the Circuit of the Americas up next. The result follows Verstappen's pole in Singapore where Leclerc had lined up alongside the Red Bull on the front row.