Sebastian Vettel dominates as Mercedes flounder in Singapore

Sebastian Vettel took his third win for Ferrari with a brilliant performance under the floodlights around the streets of Singapore. The German had to contend with a very fast Daniel Ricciardo in 2nd place, who barely let his former team mate out of sight, with safety cars bringing him back to the gearbox to the Ferrari. Kimi Raikkonen completed the podium, making this the first Ferrari double podium of the season.

In 4th place was Nico Rosberg. Mercedes had been struggling all weekend to get the tyres to work with the car. Lewis Hamilton was running ahead of his team mate but a loss of power saw cars begin to fly past him and, despite giving Hamilton’s a number of solutions, they were unable to fix the problem. They retired the car to save mileage on the engine which still has to do the next race in Japan.

Mercedes tried something different on the strategy to try to close the gap to the top 3, using the soft tyres in the middle stint so they could be on the quicker supersoft tyre at the end of the race. However, the safety car was brought out in the middle of that stint in an unusual incident where a man managed to find his way on the track and was walking down the back straight. The poor timing of the safety car meant they did not feel the supersoft tyre would go the distance so they used the softs, denying them the chance to challenge for the podium.

With Mercedes in trouble while Ferrari were on strong form has brought Vettel much closer in the championship. Rosberg took 12 points out of Hamilton’s 53 point lead, and Vettel closed the gap from 74 to 49 points.

With six races still to go, and Vettel’s refusal to give up on the championship, the German could well be hoping for a late lunge at the title. It remains to be seen, however, whether this was just a blip for Mercedes or if Ferrari now have a car that can match, or even beat, the Silver Arrows.

Valtteri Bottas was 5th while his team mate struggled. He collided with Nico Hulkenberg as he exited the pit lane, leaving the German out of the race and with a three-place grid penalty for the next race. But Massa’s woes continued, as he retired with a gearbox issue. This was something that plagued a number of cars on the grid; Fernando Alonso also retired for the same reason. Carlos Sainz had a similar issue on the first safety car restart, but managed to get the car going again. Bottas also had a scare with the gearbox towards the end of the race.

Sergio Perez brought the Force India home in 7th to bring the team back ahead of Lotus in the constructor’s championship. He came under a late attack from the Toro Rosso drivers. Max Verstappen, who stalled at the start of the race and was a lap down as a result, fought his way up the field. He was helped by the safety car which brought him on the back of the pack, but the Dutchman pulled some amazing overtakes to bring himself up to 8th.

Sainz also managed to haul himself up the order, following his team mate to 9th. Towards the end of the race, the team asked Verstappen to let his team mate through, but he refused to do so.

Felipe Nasr brought home the last point with a late move on Romain Grosjean who pulled into the pits to retire but was still classified as a finisher in the final result. Marcus Ericsson was 11th ahead of Pastor Maldonado who ran the latter stages of the race with damage to the rear diffuser after Jenson Button made contact with the Venezuelan. Button was another retiree, making it a double DNF for McLaren on a weekend that promised to be a positive one for the team.

The Manor cars brought up the rear of the field, with Alexander Rossi leading Will Stevens on his F1 debut. It proved to be a tough but impressive debut race for the American as he ran the second half of the race without team radio.

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