Max Verstappen wins in Singapore, and the first thing he does is blast F1

Max Verstappen won Saturday's Singapore Grand Prix sprint race, sat down in the press conference, and had called for the Marina Bay Circuit not to host any more sprints before he stood up again.

Verstappen and the other two members of the sprint podium, Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc, all argued against sprints being held at circuits like Singapore, where overtaking is difficult.

The Dutchman tinged his criticism with a touch of his standard 'it's not my decision, I just have to race it' disclaimer, but did tell the media 'I think we shouldn't host a sprint where you can't pass'.

He also mixed in one of his other common refrains from this season, claiming that the new overtake mode 'barely does anything' to facilitate overtaking at the track. That, from the outside, appears to be a fundamental failing of a feature which has 'overtake' in the name.

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Answering a question about the track's future as a sprint race host – it is not one of the ten races which will feature the shorter event in 2027 – Verstappen said: "I mean, yeah, I think we shouldn't host a sprint where you can't pass.

"You know, you have tracks where you can race and can overtake, but of course, in some places you cannot pass, and we are going to have sprints there also next year. Yeah, I mean, I'm fine. I mean, I just do my thing and then that's it, right? But yeah, it's not what I like.

"The track is great, but also the problem we have at the moment is with the overtake mode, it barely does anything here. You don't really gain a lot on the straights. So also that, with how all the rules are at the moment, with our lovely batteries, yeah, it just doesn't do much.

"You can't even get super close or have a massive overspeed at the moment. So I, of course, fully agree we need to have a longer straight or more of a proper hairpin to overtake. But even with that, also we need a bigger delta on the straight."

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Hamilton, responding to the same question, couched his answer in some caveats about loving the race in Singapore and having fun in the wet conditions, and shared that he'd been discussing possible circuit alterations with Verstappen to give the track more overtaking opportunities.

"But if it was dry," he admitted, "that would have been probably the most boring race for you to have watched. It was the wet, the rain, that made it exciting.

"So, if you can always make it rain, then it's always going to be a great sprint race. But otherwise, it would probably just have been straightforward tyre management, everyone sticking behind each other."

Leclerc answered the question last, and possibly most forcefully of all – dismissing the idea of sprints at street circuits as a whole, including at his home grand prix in Monaco.

"I agree [with Hamilton and Verstappen]," he said. "I don't think it makes sense to have any sprint races on city tracks in general.

"And we probably should use these sprints to have them on tracks where it's easy to overtake, where you can have a lot of racing action and it actually adds something to the weekend. Whereas here or Monaco, I don't think it adds anything to the weekend."

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