Hamilton moves into three-point lead after electronics short-cut Rosberg's race; But Lewis made to work for win after Safety Car cancels early advantage; Vettel claims best result of 2014 in second
Monday 22 September 2014 10:19, UK
Lewis Hamilton unexpectedly vaulted into the lead of the World Championship for just the second time in a compelling 2014 season with a hard-earned victory in a dramatic night-time Singapore GP after the lights went out early on Nico Rosberg’s race.
The Briton’s path to his seventh win of the year – and a small, but important, three-point title lead – had appeared to be cleared by the demise of his team-mate and title rival as the otherwise all-conquering Mercedes team’s lingering Achilles’ heel – unreliability – intervened on the formation lap when a steering loom failure meant Rosberg's W05 didn’t even get away from the grid.
Rolled away from the front-row and to the end of the pitlane for the race start, Rosberg was able to get going at the back of the field but not to any meaningful extent as a litany of electronically-related glitches rendered the fastest car in the field toothless. The hitherto championship leader was then put out of his misery on lap 15 when his car was unable to get going again after he had to shut it down for the team to even complete a pitstop.
With the reliability pendulum swinging once again to dramatic effect between the title contenders, Hamilton appeared on course to inflict maximum damage on Rosberg as he pulled away from pole at the front of the field from first Sebastian Vettel and then Fernando Alonso.
However, not for the first time in Singapore’s F1 history, the intervention of a mid-race Safety Car threw sudden unexpected drama into proceedings and made Hamilton’s route to that crucial victory rather more complicated.
Prior to the race ‘reset’ Hamilton had held a growing advantage over Alonso – the Ferrari driver having undercut Vettel and switched to the supersoft tyres at the second stops – but was locked into a three-stop strategy owing to the fact he had yet to switch to the soft tyres.
With Alonso ducking out of second during the Safety Car to make his own mandatory switch to the yellow-marked compound, and the Red Bulls of Sebastian Vettel and Daniel Ricciardo, having already used both tyres, deciding to run mammoth 30-lap-plus stints to the end, Hamilton had to build up a massive lead over his pursuers in order to not lose too much ground when he eventually pitted.
The calls of ‘Hammertime’ to Hamilton by his race engineer over the radio when the Briton needs to push before a pitstop have become famous this year, but as Sky F1’s Martin Brundle remarked in commentary, the Briton needed something more akin to “Sledgehammertime’ on this occasion as he attempted to build a pit-stop advantage over Vettel.
What followed was memorable as Hamilton, three seconds quicker than the lead Red Bull on the first restart lap alone, lapped consistently up to two seconds a lap faster to open up a 26-second lead in the space of a 15-lap blitz. This, however, still didn't allay Hamilton's fraying nerves as he repeatedly asked over the radio when he would be pitting so his tyres wouldn't "blow up".
And while his pace surge wasn't quite enough to pit and re-emerge on the track ahead of Vettel, such was his combination of car and tyre advantage that Hamilton spent just one lap in second place before breezing past the ailing Red Bull into Turn Seven.
Then, as if to confirm the speed advantage he had held for the entire race, Hamilton took the chequered flag by a commanding 13-second margin to regain the championship lead for the first time since May.
"Lewis has driven an incredible race, it was a great performance," Mercedes boss Toto Wolff told Sky Sports F1. "With Nico, we had a hardware problem. In a team, you need to be able to apologise. We have a missile of a car but we are having unreliability issues. Obviously Lewis has caught up a lot of points since Spa and if there is a racing God then maybe he was there today."
Vettel still came home second for the German’s best result of his largely forgettable title defence, holding off team-mate Daniel Ricciardo and Alonso after a mammoth 34-lap closing stint on the soft tyres.
Felipe Massa claimed what turned out to be a rather lonely fifth for Williams but team-mate Valtteri Bottas slipped from sixth to out of the points in 11th over a tumultuous series of final laps as the Finn’s FW36 completely ran out of grip.
In a thrilling closing exchange, Jean-Eric Vergne, already dropped by Toro Rosso for 2015, came through to claim a joint career-best sixth – despite a five-second time penalty – ahead of Force India’s Sergio Perez and the second Ferrari of Kimi Raikkonen.
With Jenson Button a late mechanical retirement for McLaren, Nico Hulkenberg and Kevin Magnussen completed the points scorers – a combination of results which lifts Force India back above their Woking rivals in the championship.
Hamilton too was on the move in the standings heading to the next race in Japan, not that the title-chasing Briton is going to let that fact alter his mindset for the deciding stretch of the campaign.
"In my head, the best I thought l could do here with was claiming seven points back and I’d have to keep chipping away at it. Instead, all of a sudden, it’s 25 points caught up,” a guarded Hamilton told Sky Sports F1. “I still feel like I am hunting, I still feel like I am chasing – and that’s a good feeling.
"This is game time. This is about hunting. In my head, I don’t think I am leading the championship. There are still five races left and all I’m going to do is what I’ve done in the last two races which is just attack every session.”
How the championship battle stands with five races to go:
1. Lewis Hamilton - 241 points.
2. Nico Rosberg - 238 points.
3. Daniel Ricciardo - 181 points.
