170 meters.
This statistic went from interesting to perhaps underwhelming: Lando Norris has never led the opening lap when starting from pole position in his entire F1 career. He has a history of winning when starting from pole position, most notably with his dominant performance at this season's Dutch Grand Prix, but even that afternoon in Zandvoort, Norris lost the lead on the opening lap.
But as James Hinchcliffe points out, 170 metres is F1TV Ahead of Sunday's Singapore Grand Prix, the approximate distances from the starting grid to Turn 1 at the Marina Bay Street Circuit have been revealed. With Norris starting from pole position again, with Drivers' Championship rival Max Verstappen starting alongside him in second, can he finally put an end to that statistic – and the lingering questions surrounding it?
Now we have the answer.
The McLaren driver burst off the start line and, as had previously proved problematic, maintained his lead over Verstappen in the second phase of the start before finally starting at the front and leading the opening lap.
He never looked back.
Norris was out of DRS range by lap three and had extended his lead over Verstappen, and on lap nine the team instructed Norris to extend his lead over Verstappen to around five seconds by the mid-teens.
By lap 13 the gap was around seven seconds. By lap 16 the gap was in double digits.
By lap 24, Norris had a lead of around 18 seconds over Verstappen and had his pit stop all but in hand.
A rather scary moment came soon after for Norris. Having started the race on medium tyres, he had extended his stint beyond the recommended expiration date. However, later in that stint, he experienced a lock-up at Turn 14, causing Norris to make slight contact with the wall with the left side of his front wing, leading the driver to warn his team that he might have damage to his front wing. Norris made a pit stop on lap 30, and McLaren switched to hard tyres, but the team kept the front wing on, reporting only “minor” damage.
Disaster was averted as the McLaren driver rejoined the fight and continued to pull away.
Behind him, the battle continued to be intriguing, as Norris' team-mate Oscar Piastri, after starting fifth, did a longer stint on medium tyres and didn't pit until lap 38. The Australian rejoined the fight in fifth place but soon overtook Lewis Hamilton in front of him to move up to fourth place.
Next up was Hamilton's Mercedes team-mate George Russell, and by lap 45 Piastri had closed the gap to less than a second, closing in on the Mercedes driver through corner after corner at the narrow Marina Bay Circuit.
On lap 45, Piastri made a successful overtake exiting turns six and seven to move onto the podium in third place behind Verstappen.
That lap brought another tense moment for Norris and McLaren, when the race leader, who was more than 20 seconds ahead of Verstappen at the time, hit his right rear wheel on the wall at Turn 10.
It's a reminder that the difference between glory and disaster is tiny in this sport, especially in the sauna-like surroundings of the Singapore Grand Prix.
“Okay, fully concentrate now. Drink some water,” was the instruction from Norris' race engineer, Will Joseph.
In other words, it was a time of concentration and not giving up the game.
In the end, Norris didn't give up. He got the start he needed, built a commanding lead over his rivals and won with the kind of dominance no other champion has ever achieved in the sport.
Piastri's podium finish saw McLaren extend their lead over Red Bull in the constructors' championship to 41 points. In contrast to McLaren's double podium, Verstappen finished second and Sergio Pérez could only manage 10th after a tough qualifying session on Saturday and starting from 13th on the grid.
Not everything was perfect for Norris on Sunday night in Singapore. As the laps went on he was awarded a bonus point for the fastest lap of the race, but in the final act of the Grand Prix, RB F1 Team called Daniel Ricciardo into the pits for soft tyres, allowing the Australian driver to put in a brilliant lap at the very end to secure the bonus point.
With ongoing rumours surrounding Ricciardo's future and his status at VCARB, only time will tell if this will be Ricciardo's final outing in F1.
“Thank you Daniel,” Verstappen said over the radio after the race, with the Red Bull driver acknowledging what that point meant to him in the battle with Norris.
But the night belonged to Norris, Piastri and McLaren, and at this rate it might be the season too.
“It was a great race, there were a few close calls and a few little mistakes along the way,” Norris told David Coulthard trackside after the Grand Prix. “The car was great, I was able to push and I was flying the whole race.”
“It was a good day for the team,” Norris concluded.
Provisional results from Sunday's Singapore Grand Prix are below:
When it comes to the Drivers' Championship, Norris absolutely needed this win to keep the pressure on Verstappen, taking a further seven points off Verstappen's lead and now sitting 52 points behind in the race with six race weekends and three F1 sprint races remaining.
The grid will quiet down over the next few weeks with the next race being the United States Grand Prix in Austin in mid-October, and Red Bull claims that it is at the Circuit of the Americas that the RB20 will see the most progress and could spark a late-season surge.
Given the performances of Norris, Piastri and McLaren in recent weeks, they will have to work harder to catch up with their rivals at the top of the standings.
