Lewis Hamilton has put himself back atop the drivers’ championship tree with a dominant win at the Singapore Grand Prix. It follows his victory in the last outing in Italy and is the 2008 world champion’s seventh win of the year.
Hamilton’s day started brilliantly when his teammate Nico Rosberg was wheeled off the grid before the parade lap with technical problems relating to his steering wheel and gear selection. Rosberg eventually started from pit lane but had a horrid race, unable to make any serious progress through the back markers, and retired after 13 laps with a faulty wiring loom. Hamilton’s maximum points haul in Singapore now gives him a 3 point lead in the championship with five races to go.
Fighting over the scraps in the wake of Lewis were the Red Bull pairing and Fernando Alonso. The order ended up with Sebastian Vettel in second, his best result for the year, followed by Daniel Ricciardo and Alonso. It’s the first time this season two Red Bull drivers have been on the podium.
Vettel enjoyed a brief moment in the sun leading the race with under 10 laps to go, but this only came about due to Hamilton’s tyre strategy and the fancied Briton was easily able to reclaim his lead on fresh rubber. Second was the best Vettel could hope for and despite losing the place to Alonso earlier in the race he was able to regain his position during the pit stop rounds under the customary safety car period, which came midway through the race to clean up debris on track after a kerfuffle between Adrian Sutil and Sergio Perez.
Ricciardo had to fight hard late following a long stint on increasingly fading tyres to save P3 from Alonso, but was able to prove his mettle again to add yet another trophy to his increasing stash.
Felipe Massa managed to avoid most everyone else to claim a seemingly untroubled P5 while the soon to be unemployed Jean-Eric Vergne reminded everyone he’s actually not that bad by employing an aggressive tyre strategy and rounding up a few drivers late in the race to charge to P6. This was despite incurring the wrath of the stewards for exceeding track limits.
The top 10 was rounded out by Perez, Kimi Raikkonen, Nico Hulkenberg and Kevin Magnussen. Hulkenberg’s points for Force India were enough to demote the once mighty McLaren down to sixth in the constructors’ standings.
