As Mercedes seeks to understand its latest upgrade, George Russell admits that Red Bull now has the upper hand.

While there is no chance of Max Verstappen repeating his 2025 feat and heading into the final race of the season with a shot at the title, he could yet claim the runner-up spot and his team give Ferrari a late scare.

Only a week ago the Dutchman and his team celebrated its first win of the season, and Red Bull Powertrains its maiden win, and here we are a week later and it is back-to-back victories.

Not only that, Verstappen never really looked like being beaten this weekend, the Dutchman seemingly, finally at one with his 2026 package.

Russell, who finished ninth after starting from the back of the grid, admits that the Red Bull is the superior car.

"I think the main thing for us as a team is to try and understand how we're going to find more performance, because the performance of Red Bull has been very impressive the last three weeks on three very different circuits and you know right now they are the team to beat," said the Briton.

"Really you need to take your hat off to what Red Bull has done this season," added Toto Wolff. "How they have developed the car and how it's all come together as a package and then you put Max in the car and when he feels that this thing is driving like he wants it to drive then you know these are the results.

"So, by far the quickest guy today, has been the quickest guy in quali," he added, "and let's see if, you know, when our upgrade hopefully starts to work and land in a place where we think it should be, whether we can be competitive against him."

The upgrade, introduced at Sepang, has proved problematic and while the German team initially thought it had taken a step backwards, it believes it has learned more this weekend, despite the obvious limitation of the Sprint format.

"The goal right now is we need to understand how to get more out of this package," said Russell. "Kimi ran it, the numbers say it's performing as we expect but obviously the lap times haven't been that great so we need to try and understand how to make that work."

"When we entered the weekend we made the highly unusual move in a cutting-edge technology business to have two different cars because we felt we need to accelerate our learning curve, and that was good," said Wolff. "But fundamentally looking back at the race now at the end of the weekend, I think that this new car needs a very different set-up philosophy than the previous car and this is what we're learning at the moment.

"Was it an easy car today like the previous one? I don't think it does have the performance that we were hoping the upgrade would bring? I don't think so yet. But it was a step in the right direction and in Austin we should see whether we can continue to consolidate that and whether in effect it has more performance because it's crucial for the development direction for next year."

"It's taken a while, but I think this race was very good," said Verstappen, having finally claimed victory at Marina Bay.

However, the Dutchman, who has suffered a string of poor starts, once again almost fluffed it on Sunday, allowing Charles Leclerc to get as they headed towards Turn 1, leaving the four-time world champion to battle hard as they entered the corner.

"Yeah, well, you always try to do your best and luckily it was just good enough," he laughed, when asked about their side-by-side duel.

"We had pace when we needed to have it on the soft tyre and on the medium," he added, "even though I think the medium tyre for everyone was a bit more of a struggle.

"It worked out, so of course I'm very happy to win here. The last few races have been really positive for us, and it's just great to see. We have a lot of motivation in the team to try and deliver even more results.

"It's a really good group of people. I really enjoy working with them, and hopefully we can have a bit more fun until the end of the year."

It's not exactly a case of 'too little, too late', for while the Dutchman cannot challenge for the title(s), he can end the season on a high, build a solid foundation for 2027, and have a "bit more fun".

Check out our Sunday gallery from Singapore here.