Lewis Hamilton has just said what every Ferrari fan has been desperate to hear ahead of Singapore GP

Lewis Hamilton believes that Ferrari have the car to win the Singapore Grand Prix - and says the team have learned lessons from the Bahrain Grand Prix strategy decisions.

Hamilton finished in third place in Malaysia, having dropped as far down as 18th after Ferrari fitted him with dry tyres at the start of the race while other cars were on intermediates.

Team radio messages have emerged since then to show that Hamilton was initially doubtful over putting dry tyres on, with the seven-time world champion telling race engineer Carlo Santi that the track was still too wet. He did, though, decide to stay out on worn softs during a safety car period while others pitted - which allowed him to climb up the field.

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Lewis Hamilton speaks positively ahead of Singapore GP

Speaking after the Grand Prix in Malaysia, Hamilton indicated he felt Ferrari's race pace would have put them in a battle for the win with Red Bull's Max Verstappen if not for the strategy error.

And during his media duties in Singapore, the 41-year-old thinks that race pace will carry over to the Marina Bay Street Circuit this weekend.

"I think with our car, it's generally good on street circuits. Particularly when there's not long straights," he told reporters. "If you look at the last races, we were quick through corners, not so quick in a straight line."

Prior to the 2026 season, data via F1 data analyst F1GuyDan showed that Singapore was one of the tracks on the F1 calendar in which the least amount of time is spent at full throttle.

According to the data, only 47 per cent of the lap at the Marina Bay circuit was spent at full throttle as of the 2023 season, with only Mexico (43 per cent) and Monaco (41 per cent) lower. Unsurprisingly, Monza topped the charts, with 70 per cent of the lap completed at full throttle.

'Ultimately a mistake...' - Lewis Hamilton addresses Bahrain GP strategy calls

Hamilton was once again asked on Thursday about Ferrari's dry tyre error in Malaysia - and gave a telling answer in defence of his team in response.

"I think what we do, for some reason, as a team, gets far more flack than anybody else," he said. "McLaren made the same decision and no-one even said anything about it, you know? Or they made some excuse, of some sort.

"It was ultimately a mistake, but it's not the strategies. I think, unfortunately, my strategy team gets the brunt of the call but in actual fact, the call didn't come from the strategists. The call comes from, collectively, us working together. Fred [Vasseur, team principal], Matteo [Togninalli, head of trackside engineering], myself, my engineer. We make the decision together. We discuss it, and we put our input, we put all our ideas and information into the pot and whether that's good or not.

"Everyone is just trying to do the best they can. It wasn't good enough and we've had a huge discussion about it, and we're going to try and work on how we can come to a better conclusion more consistently in the future."

Singapore has been assigned as a sprint weekend, with the sprint race due to get underway at 10am UK time on Saturday. Qualifying starts at 2pm UK time, with the race starting at 1pm on Sunday.