Hamilton apologises to Ferrari after strategy call at Singapore GP as Antonelli nears title

Lewis Hamilton apologised to his Ferrari team after taking his own strategic decision and finishing sixth at the Singapore Grand Prix on 11 October 2026, a result that cost the team points and helped Kimi Antonelli move closer to the championship.

Ferrari had been positioned for a 2-3 finish with Charles Leclerc and Hamilton before the seven-time champion slipped to sixth in the closing laps while defending on worn tyres and being passed by Kimi Antonelli, Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri. The team had called both cars into the pits during a mid-race virtual safety car, with stopping under the VSC saving about 10 seconds versus stopping under racing conditions.

Hamilton apologised to the team on the slowing-down lap, saying: "Sorry, boys. I let you down today with that strategy. My call, and I lost us valuable points. I'll try and make up for it in the next one." He did not speak to the media after the race, saying he felt unwell and being given permission to miss the interview zone, and released a statement that included: "Under the virtual safety car, the team called me in but I missed the entry. After that, I decided to stay out and try to hold track position to the end but in the closing laps, I was struggling massively with tyre degradation and lost three places, finishing P6, which doesn't reflect the pace we had in the car. "A painful lesson, but I take full responsibility for the decisions I made. Not every call will work out, and I can accept getting it wrong but I'm sorry for the team for the points we lost today. They put so much into every weekend, and I wanted to deliver more for them. I'll continue to put the work in and come back fighting at the next race."

Ferrari team principal Frederic Vasseur described the sequence: "Clearly we asked them to pit. Charles pitted. Lewis didn't want to pit because he... I don't know why. And then he realised it was the wrong call. It's why he apologised to the team. "Now it's not a drama for me that he made the wrong call. I'm making mistakes, he's making mistakes, we're all making mistakes sometimes. Now we have to look ahead and make mistakes positively." Ferrari left Leclerc ahead because he had pitted six laps later, a decision Vasseur defended as giving Charles the tyre advantage, though the medium tyre ultimately proved the weakest option for the race.

Hamilton explained his reasoning, saying he had started on a new medium tyre to try a long one-stop and that the medium "didn't perform as well as the soft." His first stop came six laps before Leclerc's; Hamilton was initially faster and followed Leclerc within two seconds for 10 laps but began to lose ground a couple of laps before the VSC and could not hold position.

Max Verstappen won from pole, taking both the sprint race and the main grand prix, with Leclerc second and Antonelli third. Antonelli's podium moved him into a commanding championship position: he leads team-mate George Russell by 102 points and Hamilton by 111 points, and needs to leave Austin with an advantage of at least 125 points to clinch the title with five races at most remaining after that. The Italian will secure the championship at the US Grand Prix at the Circuit of the Americas on 25 October if he wins and Russell finishes ninth or lower and Hamilton fifth or lower.

Asked about the prospect of clinching the title, Antonelli said: "For sure, but at the same time, I know it's very close, I know it's there, but I just need to make sure that I keep doing the best I can. "The mindset is always the same, to go out there and win and perform the best way I can. "This weekend I haven't particularly driven that well. I felt like I could have done a better job, but I feel confident that a week to reset and I'm really looking forward to being back in Austin. "But at the end of the day, if I don't do my job well, then the result won't come. So in order to achieve what I want, I need to perform, as simple as that."

F1 is proceeding with the original calendar that ends with races in Qatar and Abu Dhabi but the article noted those events could be cancelled if the war in the Middle East intensifies before mid-November, in which case the season would end at Imola on 6 December after a two-week break following the Las Vegas race on 22 November. Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff said: "I haven't looked at it from that perspective, because the moment I have the thought of 'how many points is it actually, and when could he win it,' I remind myself that this is motor racing and crazy things have happened. "The aim must be to score points, not to lose too many on the others, like today, gaining on Lewis, which was unexpected, and then it's going to come towards him, whether that's in Mexico or Brazil (the races immediately after Austin) or further down the line."

Mercedes ran two different specifications in Singapore, with Antonelli in the new spec and Russell in the old, and the team reported progress in understanding the new aerodynamic package by the end of the weekend. Antonelli said: "We're just trying to understand how to extract more potential out of it because we do see the gains, we do see what it could bring. "It's just that the window is very small at the moment where the car operates and is very sensitive to the way you drive it, the way you take a corner, the way you brake. So it reacts very differently. "So hopefully now in Austin, we have three free practices, so we can be very open-minded with set-up and hopefully we can find a way and we can use the full potential of the package and finally see the gains." Russell added: "The goal is to improve the car. We were dominant for so long and since the break we have seen Red Bull be exceptionally fast on many different types of circuits and we need to go back to winning ways."

Verstappen reflected on the weekend's form, saying: "Very different tracks that we have gone well at now. That's of course always nice to see. "Our car has taken a really nice step forward. It's just been more driveable and more predictable. That's what I wanted and needed from the car to find that last step to fight up front. And I hope that we can carry that momentum forward. "We don't really have anything to win in the championship, right? Kimi is miles ahead. I don't care if I'm second, third or fourth. It doesn't do anything. But I just want to have fun until the end, you know, try to go for a day's success." He added that he was cautious about being competitive at every remaining race and spoke about the challenges of the Circuit of the Americas, concluding with colourful remarks about the track's bumps. The next confirmed race is the US Grand Prix at the Circuit of the Americas on 25 October, where Antonelli can clinch the title under the scenarios set out above.