Singapore GP: Why Sprint debut at Marina Bay street track provides new twist to F1's toughest race weekend

Formula 1 stages its sixth and final Sprint event of the year this weekend to conclude the first flyaway triple header of the sport’s busy 2026 season run in.

And, for the first time, the Sprint format is being used at the Singapore Grand Prix and its Marina Bay street track, home of the sport’s original night race.

But on a track not known for its overtaking, what kind of weekend can we expect with two qualifying sessions and two races?

How the Singapore GP weekend will be different to normal

When the Sprint format was first introduced at three races for the 2021 season, the tracks selected – Silverstone, Monza and Interlagos – were ones deemed to be particularly good for racing so to justify the addition of a 100km race on the Saturday as an appetiser to the main Sunday Grand Prix.

That has generally continued to be the case in the selection of Sprint venues up to this year, with perhaps the inclusion of Imola in 2022 the surprise exception.

Street tracks, which by their nature traditionally aren’t as overtaking-friendly as conventional permanent tracks, have generally not featured on that yearly list.

Azerbaijan did host a Sprint in 2023, but Baku’s wall-lined street track features the longest straight on the calendar and so allows passing.

Singapore certainly falls more into the category of conventional street track – there are no long straights of note and overtaking opportunities are severely limited around the confined, twisty layout.

The floodlit race is instead most known for its physicality owing to the hot and humid conditions of the Asian country and the fact the 62-lap race pushes towards the two-hour limit around a 19-corner lap that features plenty of 90-degree turns.

So, holding a second race this weekend appears counterintuitive in one sense to the original purpose of the Sprint format. However, there are flip sides to the decision.

The first relates to qualifying. Given the lack of passing opportunities in the race, qualifying is always considered absolutely essential at Marina Bay and, like all street tracks where the walls are so close, the Saturday spectacle is often spectacular.

The circuit was the scene of one of the most famous qualifying laps in the sport’s recent history when Lewis Hamilton surged to pole position for Mercedes in 2018, while numerous drivers have come a cropper against the barriers over the years when pushing for a decisive, grid-defining lap.

This year there will be two such sessions – Sprint Qualifying on Friday followed by Grand Prix Qualifying on Saturday – which means double the qualifying challenge and, therefore, double the jeopardy for drivers.

The Sprint format also means drivers and teams will have two-thirds less time to hone their cars’ set-ups and settings for the competitive sessions given there is only a single one-hour session of practice running instead of the usual three.

Building up rhythm and confidence is crucial on a street track so drivers know they will have to shortcut that process this time in Singapore. However, that is clearly easier said than done, increasing the likelihood of mistakes in sessions that count and teams going down set-up cul-de-sacs.

A further potential twist comes in the scheduling of the sessions.

That sole practice takes place in the hours before sunset at 4.30pm local time (9.30am BST) whereas Sprint Qualifying is at 8.30pm (1.30pm BST) when the floodlights will be in full effect and temperatures will be a little cooler, creating a set-up conundrum for teams as cars, engines and tyres won’t necessarily behave the same in different conditions.

Parc-ferme conditions mean teams can’t then touch the cars again for Saturday’s Sprint, which takes place during the late afternoon like practice.

A precursor to Monaco 2027

Next season the Sprint format is being expanded to 10 events and, when the full 2027 calendar was published last month, the surprise news came from the fact that Monaco had been selected to host one of them.

The Principality’s street circuit is even narrower and harder to pass on than Singapore’s, which has increasingly made qualifying the standout aspect of that particular race weekend as cars have become wider and more reliable.

Staging two races there next year therefore appears to be as counter-intuitive as it does in Singapore, yet the opposite thinking in terms of doubling up on qualifying and building in the potential for more unpredictability now appears to be a balancing factor.

It will be interesting to hear what drivers, who have mostly been supportive about bringing the Sprint to Monaco next year, make of the Singapore Sprint experience as it unfolds.

A four-team fight for Singapore victory?

Irrespective of how much unpredictability there is this weekend on Singapore’s Sprint debut, the weekend promises to be competitive in the battle for victory at the front.

Max Verstappen’s impressive win for Red Bull last week in Malaysia means F1’s ‘Big Four’ teams have now all won at least one race in the first year of the sport’s new regulations, with Mercedes’ early-season dominance a thing of the past despite the Silver Arrows’ continued command of both world championship races.

Marina Bay was actually one of only two races that Mercedes won last year although George Russell, who dominated that weekend, already knows his hopes of going back-to-back are effectively over thanks to a grid penalty for excessive engine usage that will send him to the back of Sunday’s grid.

Russell will still hope to be a factor at the front in Saturday’s Sprint, though, where the grid penalty does not apply.

But it is clearly championship leader Kimi Antonelli, who dominated Monaco but crashed in Baku qualifying, who will be carrying Mercedes’ front-running hopes into Sunday on a weekend the team bid to get a handle on why their big aerodynamic upgrade brought to Malaysia did not deliver the expected step forward.

Who has won on 2026’s Sprint weekends so far?


Race weekend	Sprint winner	Grand Prix winner
China	George Russell	Kimi Antonelli
Miami	Lando Norris	Kimi Antonelli
Canada	George Russell	Kimi Antonelli
Britain	Kimi Antonelli	Charles Leclerc
Netherlands	George Russell	Lando Norris

The in-form Verstappen will also likely be a factor at the front for resurgent Red Bull as he finally looks to win the Singapore Grand Prix – at the 10th attempt.

Marina Bay is the one long-standing track on the current calendar (Madrid, where Verstappen finished second last month, only joined the schedule this year) that the Dutchman has yet to win at.

Verstappen has qualified and finished second in each of the last two years, so has certainly been knocking on the door to do so. Red Bull will hope their recent performance gains elsewhere transfer to the unique demands of Singapore.

Then there is McLaren, who claimed dominant victories with Lando Norris on F1’s last visits to high-downforce tracks in Hungary and Zandvoort but have hitherto not enjoyed great success across the first two legs of the Azerbaijan-Malaysia-Singapore triple header.

The absence of long straights is good news for Ferrari, who will hope the race pace that allowed Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc to recover strongly from the team’s disastrous slick-tyre strategy at the start of last Sunday’s delayed Sepang race will transfer to the slower-speed streets of Singapore.

Formula 1 heads straight to Singapore for the last Sprint weekend of the season with track action starting this Friday, live on Sky Sports F1. Stream Sky Sports with NOW – no contract, cancel anytime

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