Lewis Hamilton moved to the top of the Formula One drivers' standings with victory in Singapore on Sunday, yet the Briton was more relieved than delighted after his teammate had mechanical issues and the safety car was deployed midway through the race.
Hamilton had arrived in South East Asia 22 points behind fellow Mercedes driver Nico Rosberg, but after squeaking to the pole position in qualifying, the Briton made the most of the German's misfortune in the race to move to a three-point lead at the end of the day – 241 to his teammate's 238 – with five rounds to go.
Rosberg became stuck on the front row of the starting line when his steering wheel failed and had to begin the race from the pit lane.
When he retired after mechanics failed to solve the issue, Hamilton had a clear path to victory.
“Obviously yesterday in qualifying it was close between everyone so I didn’t really know what to expect today but I got off cleanly,” Hamilton said after beating the Red Bull Racing cars of Sebastian Vettel and Daniel Ricciardo to the line to record his seventh victory of the season.
“It would have been a far more hard-core race had Nico been with me as the car was feeling very good and we would have been strong. Later on in the race, I was a little bit unaware of what I needed to do.”
Hamilton got away cleanly and appeared well on course for an easy victory until a seven-lap safety car period midway through the race after the Force India of Sergio Perez and the Sauber of Adrian Sutil had come together.
The safety car altered the strategies of the three cars behind him, with all of them opting to run to the finish on the same tyres. Hamilton had only used one of the mandatory tyre types at that stage – soft tyres – so needed to forge as big a lead as possible to give himself a comfortable advantage ahead of his final pit stop when he would take on the hard compound.
“The second-to-last stint, I extended my lead as long as I could and the team said ‘we need 27 seconds’. I needed six seconds more at that point and my tyres were dropping off so I didn’t really understand why,” he said.
After pitting on lap 52 and returning to the track just behind Vettel, Hamilton was confident his fresh soft tyres would carry him through to a second Singapore victory following his 2009 triumph.
“Fortunately we got to where I needed to go and we pitted. I came out and saw Sebastian going past but straight away knew they were doing a two-stop strategy and I would have good pace,” he said.
“So I took it easy on the first lap and it was actually a tight gap where I passed and maybe I should have overtaken him somewhere else but he was very fair with me and I got by.
“It was an amazing job from the team and the guys back in the factory. The car was spectacular in the race.”
Despite inheriting the championship lead from his teammate, Hamilton said that he would have preferred to see Rosberg pick up points than record his second retirement of the season.
“Well of course the points are something. I came here hoping to really gain those seven points (25 for a win, 18 for second) and anything more than that was just a bonus, so today of course those extra points are a huge help,” he said. “That’s several DNFs [Did Not Finish] we’ve had now on either car and we want to continue getting those one-twos still.
“I know the team will not be 100 per cent happy today because we wanted to win collectively, we want to be the dominant team all together, so by not getting that result, they’ll be going back to the drawing board, trying to figure out what happened.”
Yesterday was Rosberg’s second non-finish of the season.
“Sitting on the grid, seeing everybody go by was a horrible feeling. There was no power, no gears, no nothing. The car was not working at all,” the German said.
“I was hoping the team would fix it once the race started as it was sometimes working, sometimes not, but in the end there was no point in continuing. A tough day.”
The next round of the season is at Suzuka in Japan on October 5, a track that neither Mercedes driver has won at in the past.
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