2023

Red Bull began 2023 as the benchmark and rapidly turned superiority into something closer to inevitability. Max Verstappen did not simply retain the championship; he bent the season around himself, winning with a frequency that made each non-victory feel like an event in its own right.

The competitive tension therefore came less from the title fight than from the search for interruption. McLaren transformed its season with a dramatic mid-year resurgence, Mercedes and Ferrari traded flashes of promise, and every circuit became another attempt to find the conditions in which Red Bull might finally be vulnerable.

That moment arrived under the lights in Singapore. Carlos Sainz controlled the closing laps by deliberately keeping Lando Norris within DRS range, using the McLaren behind as protection from the faster Mercedes cars. George Russell crashed on the final lap, Ferrari won, and for one evening the apparently untouchable force at the front had been toppled.

It did not change the destination of either championship, but it changed the texture of the year. Singapore mattered because it reminded everyone that even a season defined by dominance could still produce suspense, invention and a result that felt much larger than a single race win.