Lewis Hamilton achieved his 29th career victory in Formula 1 and has now taken the lead of the world championship, as his Mercedes team-mate and rival Nico Rosberg retired with technical issues.
Rosberg led Hamilton by 22 points coming into the Singapore Grand Prix, but now trails his rival by three after a disastrous race.
Having narrowly missed out on pole position to Hamilton by a tiny margin of 0.007 seconds in qualifying, the expectation was for another close contest between the Silver Arrows duo.
But Rosberg’s problems began before the start, when his team discovered a glitch on the W05 and was forced to swap its steering wheel.
Rosberg then had to start the race from the pitlane when he found he could not pull away from the grid for the formation lap.
As the five red lights went out, Hamilton sprinted into the immediate lead chased by the Red Bulls of Sebastian Vettel and Daniel Ricciardo.
Into Turn 1, Fernando Alonso outbraked himself and was forced to hand the position back to Vettel. As for Rosberg, his technical troubles continued.
Rosberg made little progress during the first stint, failing even to pass Marcus Ericsson’s Caterham as he battled problems that were affecting his DRS, energy recovery systems and his gearbox.
He eventually retired at on lap 13 during the first pitstop, after yet another steering wheel change. But the car refused to re-engage first gear.
With his main championship rival removed from the race, Hamilton looked set for a comfortable win, but his superiority came under threat when the Safety Car made an appearance following the collapse of the front wing on Sergio Perez’s Force India at half distance.
Mercedes decided not to pit Hamilton (yet to run the soft compound Pirelli) under the Safety Car, requiring him to stop again under racing conditions.
So the 2008 world champion began pushing with fastest laps following the race restart, in order to open a big enough gap to the chasing pack to get in and out of the pits with his lead intact.
However, the chasing Red Bulls of Vettel and Ricciardo were attempting to make their first set of soft tyres last to the end of the Singapore Grand Prix, easing the pressure on the leader.
Hamilton stretched out more than 25 seconds over Vettel before making his final pitstop with nine of the scheduled laps to run, but this wasn’t enough to keep him ahead.
Hamilton just fended off Ricciardo into Turn 3 as Vettel claimed the lead, but with fresher set of tyres Hamilton easily retook the position and drove on to win by a comfortable 13.5 seconds margin as the race ran past the two-hour limit with a lap of the scheduled 61 to run.
Having jumped Vettel at the first round of pitstops, Alonso conceded track position to both Red Bulls by pitting under the Safety Car.
The 2005/06 world champion sat behind Ricciardo waiting for his rivals’ tyres to fall apart, but the Red Bulls held on to score their first double podium finish of the season, with Vettel bagging his best result of a difficult year in second position.
Felipe Massa’s Williams re-passed the fast-starting Ferrari of Kimi Raikkonen for fifth at the first round of pitstops and raced on to a lonely finish.
While Jean-Eric Vergne (twice penalised five seconds for exceeding track limits) scored a season’s best sixth after gambling on a third pitstop after the Safety Car and using his fresher soft tyres to pass a train of cars in the closing stages with some bold late-braking moves.
Perez recovered from his wing failure following contact with Adrian Sutil’s Sauber, to execute a similar strategy to Vergne and finish seventh as the tyres on the cars around him gave up towards the end.
Raikkonen paid dearly for his earlier loss of track position, and trailed home eighth despite pitting for fresh tyres under the Safety Car.
Nico Hulkenberg and Kevin Magnussen rounded out the top ten, as the tyres on Valtteri Bottas’ Williams – which ran as high as sixth at one point – gave up on him. Eventually finished in a pointless P11.
McLaren’s Jenson Button also looked on course to score points, after a fine start and good strategy carried him from P11 on the grid to seventh, but the 2009 world champion’s car broke down seven laps from the finish.
So a fantastic result for Lewis Hamilton. Leading the championship by three points with five races left in a exciting season. It still all to play for Nico Rosberg especially the double points in the season finale, but the winning form is with Hamilton.
Singapore Grand Prix, race result after 60 laps:
1 Lewis Hamilton Mercedes AMG Petronas F1 Team 2h00m04.795s
2 Sebastian Vettel Infiniti Red Bull Racing 2h00m18.329s
3 Daniel Ricciardo Infiniti Red Bull Racing 2h00m19.068s
4 Fernando Alonso Scuderia Ferrari 2h00m20.184s
5 Felipe Massa Williams Martini Racing 2h00m46.956s
6 Jean-Eric Vergne Scuderia Toro Rosso 2h01m01.596s
7 Sergio Perez Sahara Force India F1 Team 2h01m03.833s
8 Kimi Raikkonen Scuderia Ferrari 2h01m05.436s
9 Nico Hulkenberg Sahara Force India F1 Team 2h01m06.456s
10 Kevin Magnussen McLaren Mercedes 2h01m07.025s
11 Valtteri Bottas Williams Martini Racing 2h01m09.860s
12 Pastor Maldonado Lotus F1 Team 2h01m11.710s
13 Romain Grosjean Lotus F1 Team 2h01m12.824s
14 Daniil Kvyat Scuderia Toro Rosso 2h01m16.803s
15 Marcus Ericsson Caterham F1 Team 2h01m38.983s
16 Jules Bianchi Marussia F1 Team 2h01m39.338s
17 Max Chilton Marussia F1 Team –
Retirements/non-finish:
Jenson Button McLaren Mercedes –
Adrian Sutil Sauber F1 Team –
Esteban Gutierrez Sauber F1 Team –
Nico Rosberg Mercedes AMG Petronas F1 Team –
Kamui Kobayashi Caterham F1 Team –
Drivers’ championship
1 Lewis Hamilton 241
2 Nico Rosberg 238
3 Daniel Ricciardo 181
4 Fernando Alonso 133
5 Sebastian Vettel 124
6 Valtteri Bottas 122
7 Jenson Button 72
8 Nico Hulkenberg 72
9 Felipe Massa 65
10 Sergio Perez 45
11 Kimi Raikkonen 45
12 Kevin Magnussen 39
13 Jean-Eric Vergne 19
14 Romain Grosjean 8
15 Daniil Kvyat 8
16 Jules Bianchi 2
17 Adrian Sutil 0
18 Marcus Ericsson 0
19 Pastor Maldonado 0
20 Esteban Gutierrez 0
21 Max Chilton 0
22 Kamui Kobayashi 0
Constructors’ championship
1 Mercedes 479
2 Red Bull/Renault 305
3 Williams/Mercedes 187
4 Ferrari 178
5 Force India/Mercedes 117
6 McLaren/Mercedes 111
7 Toro Rosso/Renault 27
8 Lotus/Renault 8
9 Marussia/Ferrari 2
10 Sauber/Ferrari 0
11 Caterham/Renault 0
Next race: Japanese Grand Prix, Suzuka. October 4-6.
For the second time this season, Nico Rosberg suffered a race retirement (the first was at the British Grand Prix). The German has calls for the team to improve reliability. Autosport.com has the news story.
Nico Rosberg has urged his Mercedes Formula 1 team to sort out its reliability after retiring from the Singapore Grand Prix.
The German was left stranded on the grid after his car refused to get out of neutral.
He took the start from the pitlane but then struggled for pace before retiring after a lengthy pitstop.
“It was just that the steering wheel didn’t work and so the whole car wasn’t working,” said Rosberg.
“We need to find out what it is because again that’s a reliability problem. We’ve had quite a few this year and that’s our weakness.
“We need to get to the bottom of these things and make the car 100 per cent reliable.
“No point in shouting. It’s reliability and it’s happened again. As a team we really need to get to the bottom of it because it’s happening to us too much.
“We need to get to the bottom of everything and understand what happened today.”
Rosberg was starting from second place after losing out to Hamilton in the pole battle by just 0.007s.
“It’s very, very tough. Also the way in which it happened, not even leaving the grid and everything. It was not good,” added Rosberg.
“I was hoping that the team could still fix it, not once I was in the pitstop but before, because it was going on and off.
“Sometimes it was working, sometimes it was not working, so the hope was always there.”
Red Bull Racing’s Sebastian Vettel was left feeling bemused by Lewis Hamilton’s pass for the lead in the closing moments of the Singapore Grand Prix. Autosport.com has the details.
Sebastian Vettel declared himself surprised by Lewis Hamilton’s assertive choice of passing move in their Singapore Grand Prix victory battle.
Reigning Formula 1 champion Vettel found himself leading for the first time in 2014 when Hamilton failed to extend enough of an advantage over the Red Bull before making his third pitstop on a night when most stuck with two tyre changes after a mid-race safety car skewed strategies.
But Vettel was only in front for a lap before Hamilton managed to pass him.
The Mercedes squeezed past the Red Bull on the inside at the fast Turn 6 kink early in the DRS zone, which left Vettel puzzled.
“With the overtaking move I wasn’t sure what he was doing,” said the German.
“I gave him all the space to pass me on the inside of next corner but it seemed he couldn’t wait to get back in the lead.
“I had to back off and let him through.
“There was no point fighting. To finish P2 was the best we could do.
“We had the oldest set of tyres in the last stint so it was quite tricky managing those with not much tread left.”
Hamilton admitted that his pass had been ambitious.
“I had a tight gap,” he said. “Maybe I should have overtaken him somewhere else, but fortunately Seb was very fair.”
New championship leader Hamilton said the penultimate stint had been confusing as he tried to both pull sufficiently clear of the Red Bulls for a pitstop and not destroy his existing tyres.
“I was a bit unaware of what I needed to do,” said Hamilton.
“I had extended the stint as long as I could and they said ‘we need 27 seconds’.
“The safety car had caused me big problems. Fortunately we got to where I needed to go.”
Vettel had also been dubious about his strategy of running his third set of tyres to the finish, though he understood why Red Bull did not want him to pit again after the safety car had closed the pack up.
“It was not ideal in terms of timing with the safety car,” said Vettel.
“We’d lost position to Fernando [Alonso] as we stopped late. We went on primes [softs] and hoped for no safety car, and then it came out.
“At the restart we knew it was difficult – probably impossible – to make up 27s [for a pitstop] on older tyres with everyone behind.
“To get the beest result, we knew we had to get to the end [on those tyres].
“I wasn’t confident we could do it because of the wear we had on the sets before.”
Ferrari drivers Kimi Raikkonen and Fernando Alonso were optimistic for the future after the much-changed Italian team showed signs of progress with both drivers in the points at the Singapore Grand Prix on Sunday.
Spaniard Alonso finished fourth under the floodlights at the Marina Bay street circuit while Finn Raikkonen was eighth after complaining about being stuck behind the slower Williams cars for much of a race renowned for a lack of overtaking.
That came in the first Grand Prix since long-serving Ferrari president Luca di Montezemolo announced last week he was stepping down.
His exit will follow that of team principal Stefano Domenicali, who was replaced by Marco Mattiacci in April and 2007 world champion Raikkonen said the changes were having a positive impact.
“People at the top think there is a need for changes. Things go forward and things keep changing. I think its a good move, there has been a lot going on with Ferrari this year,” Raikkonen told reporters.
“Its not an easy place to be when the results are not good, but I think we have a great group of people and know where the weak points are and we have been improving them a lot this year for the coming years. They are making sure that things are in the right place to put us where we should be.
“I think they are good changes and it will pay off in future,” he said.
Raikkonen was plagued by a software problem on Saturday that curtailed his qualifying bid and he started Sunday’s race in seventh.
The winding, narrow street circuit does not lend itself to overtaking and Raikkonen said he had struggled to get past Massa, the man he replaced at Ferrari this season, despite having the pace.
“For most of the race stuck behind the williams, mainly Massa, I think we had a bit more pace than them but obviously we cannot get past. You cannot get close enough to attack.”
The four points he collected, along with Alonso’s 12, helped Ferrari close the gap on Williams to nine points in the race for third place in the constructors’ championship with five Grands Prix remaining this season – but double points in the Abu Dhabi finale.
It is not a position the most successful team in the sport are used to finding themselves in.
“Its been a difficult year and there is still a bit of work to do and the aim is to beat them (Williams),” said Raikkonen, who is 11th in the drivers championship.
“For sure we improve the car.. Its a lot, lot better. We made small changes.
“When we get the right place and the right conditions …I think we can be very fast… but when we get stuck behind people in certain races it just looks much more worse than it is.”
Alonso, who won the Singapore race in 2008 and 2010, briefly threatened a third win before an untimely safety car on the 37th of the 60 lap race damaged his hopes.
“The strategy I think was good, just the moment of the safety car was a bit unlucky,” said the double world champion, who bemoaned his old tyres for his struggles to attack Daniel Ricciardo’s Red Bull in third place over the closing laps.
“I think the car is getting better but the results…they didn’t change too much. Germany, Hungary, Belgium and here we were more or less similar. Fourth, fifth, third so already its four or five races where we seem more competitive.”
Source: Reuters
McLaren’s Kevin Magnussen finished in the points with tenth but suffered burns. He was taken to the medical centre for treatment. Autosport.com has the story.
Kevin Magnussen required medical attention for burns following the Singapore Grand Prix due to an unexplained heat build-up in his McLaren Formula 1 car’s cockpit.
he Danish rookie managed to finish in 10th place and completed his television interview commitments before heading for treatment.
“That was tough, very tough. At least we got one point,” he said.
“I don’t know if something was wrong, but my seat was very hot, so we have to check what’s going on.
“I couldn’t even drink the water.
“It’s the hardest-earned point I’ve ever had. It’s better than nothing.”
McLaren racing director Eric Boullier said it had been a very tough ordeal for Magnussen, who was already suffering with extreme tyre wear.
“To add injury to insult, he was then subjected to severe bodily discomfort as his car’s cockpit began to overheat, necessitating his holding his arms aloft, first one then the other, in an effort to direct cooling air down his sleeves and inside his race-suit, which was an unusually painful complication for him,” said Boullier.
“In the end, after an impressively plucky drive in extremely challenging conditions, he was able to score a single point for the team.
“It was scant consolation, of course it was, but it’s indicative of his tremendous fighting spirit, and I commend him for it.”
Fernando Alonso believes the timing of the safety car – rather than a strategic error – cost the Ferrari Formula 1 team a potential Singapore Grand Prix podium finish.
Alonso started fifth on the grid but rose to second at the start, before being forced to cede a place to Sebastian Vettel’s Red Bull having locked up at Turn 1 and driven across the run-off area.
The Ferrari jumped Vettel at the second round of pitstops, but conceded track position to both the German and his team-mate Daniel Ricciardo by pitting under the mid-race safety car caused by Sergio Perez’s front wing collapsing.
Both Red Bulls stayed out until the end of the race, restricting Alonso to fourth, but the Spaniard refused to criticise Ferrari’s decision to pit him under the safety car.
“I think the strategy was good,” Alonso said.
“If we had the pace of the Mercedes the strategy was to stay out, because if you don’t pit with the safety car and you have a two-second [per lap] advantage, you have the laps to open the gap and pit in front [of the others].
“But we don’t have that pace. If we stay out and we don’t open the gap like [Lewis] Hamilton we finish seventh or eighth.
“If you have Hamilton’s pace probably then staying out pays off.
“The moment of the safety car was probably not good, but sometimes it helps and sometimes it doesn’t help. Today it didn’t help.
“Good race, good weekend and fighting with the leaders, which is a surprise for us, and hopefully we can continue.”
When asked by AUTOSPORT if his lock-up at Turn 1 after the start had cost him a shot at the podium, Alonso replied: “Again, if I lost the podium because Fernando locked up in Turn 1, it’s OK.”
Alonso’s team-mate Kimi Raikkonen also ceded ground in the pits, losing fifth to Felipe Massa’s Williams at the first stops and then trailing home eighth having got bottled up behind the sister Williams of Valtteri Bottas after pitting under the safety car.
Ferrari team principal Marco Mattiacci defended his team’s strategic calls.
When asked by AUTOSPORT what cost Ferrari a podium in Singapore, Mattiacci said: “I don’t think there was something specific.
“Definitely the safety car didn’t do any better for us, but the race is made of 60 laps.
“We squeezed the car as much as we could; the strategy from the pits was excellent.
“There were other variables we know we cannot control. We did our best.”
Source: Autosport.com
This was a terrible race for Nico Rosberg. The team discovered that it was a broken wiring loom which affected his Singapore Grand Prix. Autosport.com has the full story.
The Mercedes Formula 1 team says a broken wiring loom inside the steering column was to blame for Nico Rosberg’s retirement at the Singapore Grand Prix.
Rosberg hit trouble before his car took to the track ahead of the race as none of the controls on the steering wheel – including the gears and clutch – worked as he tried to get it out of the garage.
Despite making it to the grid the problems could not be solved, and although the German managed to start the race from the pitlane he was forced to retire early on as his car hit further trouble.
Mercedes motorsport boss Toto Wolff said the problem was traced back to the steering column, but there was no explanation for why it had happened.
“It looks like a broken loom in the steering column, which was within the duty cycle and not towards the end of its life cycle,” explained Wolff.
“It just shut the whole thing down.
“The only thing that worked was the gear change and then the radio came back. There was no hybrid energy any more, so when we called him in we changed the steering wheel, and tried to get it going but it wouldn’t.
“The only way to get it going was to get first gear in at high revs, and this is when I said stop, we don’t want to have a jack flying out of the rear of the car and hurting somebody.
“He was a minute down by then, so that was it.”
Wolff said that the team was flying the failed parts back to its Brackley headquarters overnight so that a full analysis could begin on Monday.
Rosberg said the problems he experienced made his car undriveable, and reckoned the experience was his toughest of the year so far.
“None of the steering wheel functions worked, so I had no hybrid power, no DRS,” he explained.
“The gear paddles sort of worked which was strange, but they would always up shift two gears at a time, so I had no fourth or sixth gear. It was just all over the place, and that’s why I was slow.
“My brake balance was completely in the wrong place and I couldn’t brake properly because I couldn’t change that, so everything was all over the place.
“Even coming into the pitstop I didn’t have a pit limiter I couldn’t go into neutral, so I couldn’t do anything.
“They were going to jack me up. I would have to go full speed then they drop the car and go, but they decided that was too dangerous.
“So that was all part of the day: the toughest day of the year for me.”
Williams driver Valtteri Bottas admitted that a steering issue hurt his tyre life that comprised his Singapore Grand Prix. Autosport.com has the news story.
Valtteri Bottas thinks his Williams Formula 1 car’s steering problem was to blame for his tyres tipping over the edge on the final lap of the Singapore Grand Prix.
The Finn was running in seventh place on the final lap when his tyres dramatically fell away, allowing a train of rivals past through the tight right-hand Turn 14 as he lost all grip. He eventually finished 11th.
With team-mate Felipe Massa having made it to the end in fifth place, Bottas thinks that a steering issue that hit him in the safety car period accounted for the disparity in their tyre wear.
“The rate of degradation was getting bigger and bigger and the last lap was a bit too much,” he said.
“I had to defend the inside for that corner and, when I braked, there was no grip in the rear and it was the same on the exit. There was no traction.
“I couldn’t manage the tyres as well as I wanted because I had a problem with the steering.”
Bottas said that the steering issue left him with no feeling for what his car was doing in corners, among other issues.
“We still need to investigate if it was the power steering or some bearing,” he said.
“The steering wheel was really sticky and there was no feedback from the car.
“If I was to turn on the straight it would stay there and not come back.
“I just couldn’t feel those little snaps on the exits, so I felt I couldn’t do a perfect job managing the tyres because of the issue with the steering.”
Despite finishing in third place for Red Bull, Daniel Ricciardo admitted that a battery glitch hindered his race. Autosport.com has the details.
Daniel Ricciardo’s hopes of overhauling Red Bull Formula 1 team-mate Sebastian Vettel in the Singapore Grand Prix were hindered by a battery problem on his car.
The Australian remains an outside contender for the 2014 F1 championship, but did not quite have the pace to beat Vettel to the runner-up spot behind Lewis Hamilton on Sunday.
Ricciardo was hamstrung throughout by a battery problem that hit him initially at the first corner and then returned later on.
Team principal Christian Horner said: “He had a problem on the run down to Turn 1 at the start. Then again, probably before half-distance, we had an issue with the battery which would not discharge.
“It required quite a lot of management to try to help him out and the problem was intermittent. On some laps he would lose three or four tenths, on some laps it would be nothing.”
Ricciardo was unsure how much better he would have gone without the problem, and said it was strange the issue could not be solved.
“The power was coming and going and, from the safety car onwards, it was pretty consistently down on power,” he explained.
“Coming up through gears, I would get a bit of power and then it would drop and then it would come again.
“We definitely had a few issues and we tried fixing them but to be honest we didn’t quite clear it all up.
“I guess it did cost us a bit today but obviously we still got it to the end.
“Normally, if we have those glitches after a couple of laps we clear it but this one pretty much carried through all race.
“I guess I was a bit frustrated, a bit concerned as well that we wouldn’t get it to the flag. But luckily it held on.”
Jean-Eric Vergne did his best to boost his chances of being back on the Formula One grid next year with a season’s best sixth place for Toro Rosso in Singapore on Sunday despite two penalties.
The Frenchman is being replaced by 16-year-old Max Verstappen for 2015, with the team indicating in Singapore that the Dutch driver will get a run in the car during practice at next month’s Japanese Grand Prix.
Vergne, in his third season, finds himself surplus to requirement at just 24 years old but shone under the Singapore spotlights nonetheless.
After a difficult Saturday qualifying session at the Marina Bay street circuit, he catapulted up the grid from his 12th place position on Sunday.
He picked up a five second penalty early in his race for twice leaving the track at turn seven but battled back to ninth entering the final laps only to suffer another five second punishment for the same offence.
Undeterred, he overtook Force India’s Nico Hulkenberg, Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen and the Williams of Valtteri Bottas in the final two laps before opening up a large enough gap to swallow the penalty and keep the eight points for sixth place.
“It feels great. It was a fantastic race and I’m extremely happy, especially considering the two five second penalties,” Vergne said after the joint best result of his career.
“I was not good yesterday in qualifying and I made a mistake and I told the team that I was going to make it up today in the race and that’s what I’ve done.
“It’s a great result. Sixth is like a podium for us.
“It’s good for me…I need to push for next year. Today I think I showed my potential,” he added.
The points took Vergne onto 19 for the season, 11 more than his 20-year-old Russian team mate Daniil Kvyat who is staying on with Toro Rosso to partner Verstappen, who turns 17 this month.
The total eclipses his previous best return of 16 points in his rookie 2012 season, but Vergne was eyeing more over the closing five races.
“I’m really confident we can have a good end of the season together and I’m looking forward to Japan, where we also have some updates. Hopefully we can improve even further,” he said.
Toro Rosso chief race engineer Phil Charles only had praise for the efforts of his departing driver, who outperformed a disappointing Kvyat in 14th.
“We are very, very pleased,” he said.
“JEV (Vergne) drove an absolutely fantastic race. He had to deal with two five second penalties. He pulled off some brilliant passing moves and he managed to finish more than the five seconds ahead of the seventh placed driver, so he keeps his sixth place.
“He did absolutely everything right. He has been due a decent result, because he’s been doing a good job this year, but has had more than his share of bad luck.”
Source: Reuters
Even though the Brackley-based team won the Singapore Grand Prix thanks to Lewis Hamilton, it was another DNF which affected the championship. In this case Nico Rosberg. Mercedes motorsport boss Toto Wolff believes failures must not decide title. Autosport.com has the full story.
Mercedes motorsport boss Toto Wolff says his team risks having the shine taken off its Formula 1 success this year if the battle between its drivers is decided by reliability.
The fight between the two Mercedes drivers was blown wide open at the Singapore Grand Prix when Lewis Hamilton took a win on an evening when Nico Rosberg suffered a car failure, leaving the Briton with a three-point lead in the standings.
With the team having had a run of car failures over the course of the season, there is a risk that there will be further problems in the final five races.
When asked if he was worried that the title could ultimately be decided by such a problem, Wolff said: “That would be obviously something that would not be satisfying at all.
“We don’t want to have the spin in there that the championship was decided because one car let the driver down.
“So we need to refocus, get our heads down and keep concentrating and work out what we can do to prevent DNFs, and reliability problems.”
Wolff said he was amazed that Mercedes was still having reliability problems, especially because he had instigated a reliability working group at Brackley last winter to address this area.
“We have a great reliability team,” he said. “This is a group of people who are really dedicated to reliability and I am really proud of them.
“So it is even more astonishing we keep having those issues. They need to get a grip, but this takes time.”
Wolff made it clear just how much he was willing to give to ensure that reliability was sorted, and made reference to injuries he suffered in a cycling accident earlier this year.
“If I or we could make anything more to stop the DNFs, we would do it,” he said.
“I would break my arm again to stop the reliability issues. We just have to get on top of the problems.”