Lewis Hamilton left Singapore with a sting in the tail and a very public row in his mirrors. Nursing a Ferrari with braking gremlins and trying to keep Fernando Alonso at bay, the seven-time champion racked up track limits violations late on and was handed a five-second penalty. It pushed him down to eighth behind Alonso and lit the fuse for a post-race argument that’s rolled on well beyond Marina Bay’s floodlights.
Alonso’s radio messages were pure, unfiltered Fernando — incredulous, relentless, and razor-edged — as he chased a Ferrari that kept missing braking points. Hamilton then cheekily leaned into the theatre with an Instagram jab at the Spaniard’s choice of expletives, borrowing from an old sitcom for the punchline. Standard fare between two drivers who’ve danced this dance for nearly two decades.
The question now isn’t whether Hamilton was penalised, but if the punishment fit the offence. On Sky’s The F1 Show, Simon Lazenby floated the nuclear option: should Hamilton have been disqualified for the manner of his defence given the state of his brakes?
Jamie Chadwick, Williams development driver and W Series multi-champion, didn’t go that far — but she didn’t let Hamilton off the hook either. In her view, the corner-cutting to survive the final laps was “worth more than five seconds” given the advantage gained. Disqualification would only come into play, she argued, if the FIA had shown the black-and-orange flag demanding a pit stop to fix a car issue and Hamilton ignored it. That didn’t happen.
Her broader point was hard to argue with: it wasn’t a case of “no brakes” so much as compromised brakes, and Hamilton did bring the car home safely. But the repeated short-circuiting of chicanes while under attack? That, she said, should’ve drawn a heavier hand from the stewards.
This wasn’t a lone-wolf Ferrari in trouble, either. The team had already been firefighting with Charles Leclerc’s braking issues earlier, and by the final stint had gone into lock-the-doors-and-guard-the-points mode. Kimi Antonelli, up ahead, looked within reach at one stage, but the picture shifted from attack to containment as Hamilton’s problems worsened and Alonso’s Aston Martin homed in.
Alonso, for his part, didn’t just keep a running commentary on Hamilton’s lines. In the middle of his venting, he also flagged another sore point: what he felt was leniency shown to Hamilton after an FP3 red flag incident that didn’t result in a penalty. Ted Kravitz noted how on-brand it was — Alonso forever cataloguing the stewards’ ledger in real time, pressing every advantage and building the case as he goes.
It matters because every scrap of position has context. Aston Martin need points. Ferrari, with Hamilton now in red for 2025, are fighting their own seasonal targets and, as Kravitz pointed out, have had one eye on keeping Mercedes honest in the constructors’ stakes. These margins define the tone of a Sunday night argument.
From the FIA’s side, stewards typically separate two questions: was the car unsafe, and did the driver gain/maintain position unfairly? If officials judge the car to be unsafe, the black-and-orange flag is their tool. If the driving crosses the line but the car remains within scrutineering bounds, time penalties are the currency. Singapore handed us the messy middle — a driver managing a braking issue, making errors, and cutting corners to survive. Five seconds was the call. For many, it looked light.
There’s also the optics. Watching a Ferrari repeatedly shortcut the escape roads while fending off a rival doesn’t sit comfortably, even if the intent is to avoid a bigger incident. It’s the kind of episode that often triggers a quiet rules tidy-up in the weeks that follow. Expect the “what ifs” to land on the sporting advisory committee’s desk, even if nothing changes formally.
As for Hamilton and Alonso, nothing about this is new. The names on the entry list have rotated — Hamilton now a Ferrari driver alongside Charles Leclerc, Alonso the veteran spearhead of Aston Martin — but the competitive bandwidth between them hasn’t eroded. One of them pushes, the other refuses to yield, both keep the receipts. It’s why they’re still the show.
Hamilton’s five seconds dropped him behind Alonso. The debate may run longer. And if you’re looking for a single neat answer on whether the stewards got it right, you won’t find it. But you will find two all-timers refusing to blink, and a sport still deciding how hard to penalise the art of survival.
