Charles Leclerc had the better launch at Marina Bay. He had the inside line into Turn 1. He lifted.

In his MPH column for Motor Sport Magazine, Mark Hughes read that moment as the clearest sign yet that Ferrari’s internal politics are travelling with Leclerc into the cockpit. The reasoning: a driver who knows his team principal is being briefed against from the top floor cannot afford to walk into the garage from a first-corner collision.

Leclerc did not frame it that way after the race. He told reporters that Verstappen’s Red Bull “had no power at the end of the straight” at the key moment, but that he had lost his sight-lines coming off the line.

“I couldn’t see the panels on the right. So you lose a little bit all your references,” he said.

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Verstappen won the race from pole by 7.3 seconds over Leclerc, with Kimi Antonelli third, according to Formula 1. It was his first victory at Marina Bay, at his 10th attempt, and came on his 250th grand prix start.

The Vasseur question that will not go away

The backdrop is a Ferrari team principal whose job keeps being written about. PlanetF1 reported in late September that senior management, led by chairman John Elkann and chief executive Benedetto Vigna, had begun sketching out a succession plan that would ease Vasseur out at the end of 2026.

Two days later, Ferrari staged an unusual press call to push back on the speculation. Chief communications officer Maria Conti said the team had “full confidence in Fred Vasseur” and insisted the organisation needed to stay “united and cohesive.” Elkann and Vigna did not appear.

Vasseur himself had already made clear what the drip-feed costs him on a race weekend. After Baku, he complained that Ferrari were not working in “perfect serenity” because questions about his future were reaching the garage.

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A loyal driver with less room to risk

Leclerc signed a new long-term Ferrari deal before his home race in Monaco in June, a contract expected to run into the 2030s. He has publicly backed Vasseur in interviews across the season.

Hughes’s point is that this loyalty has a cost. A Leclerc who climbs out of a wrecked Ferrari at Turn 1 in Singapore has to face a boss he has defended, a team-mate he already tangled with weeks earlier at Monza, and a management layer looking for reasons to move. The decision not to send it is rational long before it is tactical.

Monza is not an abstraction here. On lap three of the Italian Grand Prix, Leclerc squeezed Lewis Hamilton off at the first chicane, then lost the rear at Parabolica and buried the car in the barrier. He took the blame in public.

“I lost the rear, as simple as that, it’s my mistake,” he said. The internal fallout, with Hamilton fuming over team radio, was reported for days.

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Verstappen’s quieter year

The contrast Hughes draws is with a driver carrying almost nothing on his shoulders. Verstappen signed a Red Bull extension through the end of 2030 in Zandvoort in August, ending months of speculation about an exit clause.

The championship has moved on without him. Antonelli leads on 340 points, with George Russell second, Hamilton third and Verstappen fourth on 221, Leclerc fifth. For Verstappen that means every weekend is a free swing. For Leclerc, every weekend is a referendum on the team.

The next round is the United States Grand Prix at the Circuit of the Americas on 23-25 October.

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