Lando Norris identified the weakness in Ferrari’s Singapore Grand Prix strategy almost immediately after Lewis Hamilton made his early pit stop, as the Maranello team’s attempt to split its race plans ultimately left the seven-time world champion exposed late in the Grand Prix.
Hamilton had started third on Medium tyres while the leading cars around him chose the Soft compound. Ferrari hoped the alternative approach could create strategic pressure on polesitter Max Verstappen, particularly with Charles Leclerc starting alongside his team-mate on the front two rows. Instead, poor Medium-tyre performance forced Hamilton into the pits far earlier than expected and undermined the advantage the strategy was supposed to provide.
Lando Norris quickly sees Ferrari’s Medium tyre problem
Hamilton stopped on lap 18, earlier than any other driver in the field, despite beginning the race on what was expected to be the more durable compound. The early stop placed him onto Soft tyres that he would eventually attempt to extend all the way to the lap-62 finish.
One lap later, Lando Norris gave McLaren race engineer Will Joseph a blunt assessment of what he was seeing. The British driver indicated that the Medium tyre looked extremely poor and therefore had little interest in abandoning his own Soft tyres at that stage.
That observation captured Ferrari’s problem. Hamilton had already lost the expected longevity benefit of starting on the Medium, while the drivers who later switched to that compound were not similarly disadvantaged because their strategies had developed in a different sequence.
The full context of Hamilton’s Singapore weekend can be followed in the Lewis Hamilton Ferrari news section.
Ferrari’s alternative Lewis Hamilton strategy breaks down
Ferrari had deliberately split the strategies of Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc in an attempt to maximise the opportunity created by starting second and third behind Max Verstappen. However, Hamilton’s pace deteriorated on the Medium tyre and he began holding up Kimi Antonelli, Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri.
The strategy initially appeared to gain another opportunity when Lance Stroll’s retirement triggered a Virtual Safety Car. Ferrari wanted Hamilton to pit, but he chose to remain on track. That decision promoted him to second place ahead of Leclerc, who had stopped under the VSC.
Hamilton later acknowledged that remaining out had been a mistake. His older Soft tyres eventually lost performance, and Ferrari instructed him to let Charles Leclerc through before Kimi Antonelli, Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri also overtook him.
Further updates on the other Ferrari car are available in the Charles Leclerc news section.
Fred Vasseur explains why Ferrari entered Singapore tyre battle blind
Fred Vasseur acknowledged after the race that Ferrari and its rivals had been forced to make tyre decisions with very limited information. The Ferrari team principal explained that the grid effectively faced a 50-50 choice because Friday practice had provided little useful race data.
Teams had completed relatively few laps in FP1 and had concentrated on the Hard tyre, which they did not want to use unnecessarily before the race. The Sprint had originally been expected to provide the long-run information needed for Sunday, but wet conditions meant it was completed on Intermediate tyres instead.
Vasseur therefore explained that teams entered the Grand Prix without meaningful knowledge of how the Medium tyre would behave. In Ferrari’s case, the race demonstrated that the Soft was significantly stronger, which contributed to Hamilton’s difficulties during his opening stint.
The French manager also maintained that Ferrari’s second- and third-place starting positions created a genuine opportunity to explore different strategies in an effort to challenge Verstappen. The broader Marina Bay weekend context is available in the 2026 Singapore Grand Prix guide.
Ferrari gamble carries a heavy risk for limited reward
The decision can be understood as an attempt to avoid simply following Red Bull’s strategy with both cars, but it also exposed Ferrari to considerable downside. Once Hamilton’s Medium stint failed to deliver the expected longevity, the alternative strategy became increasingly difficult to recover.
There is also an element of hindsight in judging the call. Hamilton was involved in the decision-making process, and Ferrari had entered the race with unusually limited tyre information. Had the team adopted identical strategies for both cars without attempting to challenge Verstappen differently, it could just as easily have faced criticism for being too conservative.
Even so, the balance between risk and potential reward worked against Hamilton’s side of the garage. Ferrari placed a possible double podium under pressure in pursuit of a victory that already depended heavily on finding a way past Verstappen, while Norris’s early radio assessment illustrated how quickly the Medium-tyre gamble had begun to unravel.
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