Hamilton wins to re-energise title fight

F1 Grand Prix, GP Singapore, Marina Bay Street Circuit

Lewis Hamilton won the Singapore Grand Prix today, dominating the entire race after Nico Rosberg suffered car problems and had to retire early on. Sebastian Vettel finished second, closely ahead of Daniel Ricciardo and Fernando Alonso.

Drama started already before the start of the race, first with Max Chilton stalling his car on the way to the grid. This caused a big mess at the end of the pitlane, forcing other cars to go round while the Marussia was being rolled back into the box for a restart.

Then, on the starting grid, Rosberg had issues getting his car off the line for the warm-up lap. Failing to get his car started with the manual clutch, as his engineer asked following discovering the issues a few minutes earlier, Rosberg got pulled back into the pitlane to start from there. A huge difference from second place and a terrible start of the race for the championship leader.

Moments later, Kamui Kobayashi parked his car alongside the track during the warm up lap, obviously also with issues on his car. For him it was the end of the race, even before it really started.

As the lights went out for the actual start, Hamilton had an easy task to keep his lead with second place on the grid open. He left the grid impeccably with Fernando Alonso powering off the line to take second place, despite going wide through turn 1. Halfway through the lap however, Vettel took that place back, moving up into second place. An investigation was started against Alonso for cutting turn 1, but no further action sas taken, probably because the Spaniard already passed both Red Bull's by the time they started braking for turn 1.

Raikkonen also got off to a good start, taking 5th. 6th is Massa following a fierce battle with the McLarens for that position. Button was 7th at the end of lap 1, followed by Bottas, Magnussen, Kvyat, Vergne, Hulkenberg, Gutierrez, Perez, Grosjean, Sutil, Maldonado, Bianchi, Ericsson, Rosberg and Chilton.

Rosberg meanwhile has serious issues with his car. Images show his rear light lighting up continuously, indicating no ERS. The German also suffers gearbox issues as his car is double shifting up on the up shift while he is also told the pit limiter is not working and he may not go above 6500rpm in first gear.

On lap 10 Massa is the first to make a stop. MAny follow soon with the Red Bulls and Alonso all pitting simultaneously on lap 12. One lap later Hamilton has a faultless pitstop and rejoins the track in first position, 8 seconds ahead of Vettel.

Rosberg pitted one lap later and got a new steering wheel at the same time. Sadly for him though, once selecting neutral, he did not manage to get back into a gear and after 20 seconds of trying signalled his pit crew that it was the end of his race.

On lap 20, Alonso marks the fastest lap of the race and started to close the gap to Vettel, who at the time was 3 seconds in front. 3 laps later, Vettel is told to "ignore the beeps" and open the gap to Alonso which reduced to around 1.6 seconds. The gap continued to close though and triggered a pit for Alonso on lap 24 that enabled him to get ahead of Vettel after he stopped one lap later. Vettel though, similarly to the Williams drivers, are out on softs for their third stints.

Hamilton pitted one lap later and went out on new super softs, like most. It was a slightly slow stop though as the team cleaned some debris from his front wing.

On lap 31 Perez is squeezed between Sutil and the wall, breaking his front wing. That wing collapsed entirely 2 corners later, leaving debris all over the track and causing a safety car. This triggered pitstops for a lot of drivers, including Alonso who switched to softs. Hamilton, Vettel and Ricciardo stayed out.

Positions behind the SC are Hamilton, Vettel, Ricciardo, Alonso, Massa, Bottas, Button, Raikkonen, Vergne, Magnussen, Kvyat, Hulkenberg, Grosjean, Sutil, Maldonado, Bianchi, Perez, Ericsson and Chilton.

Kevin Magnussen meanwhile is suffering in his car, reporting an overheating seat. He is also unable to drink as that too got overheated. To get at least a little bit of cooling, the Dane is seen driving behind the safety car with one hand up in the air.

On lap 37 the safety car leaves the track, restarting the race with 24 laps and maximum 40 minutes to go.

Lap 41 marked the end of the race for Adrian Sutil. An earlier 5 second stop-and-go penalty probably left him out of a chance for points anyway. A loss of water pressure nonetheless put an early end to his eventful race.

16 laps from the end, Hamilton upped his advantage to 17 seconds to Vettel, thanks to his new super soft tyres compared to Vettel's 7 lap older soft tyres. Ricciardo is another 3.5s behind, followed by Alonso at 1.5 seconds.

At the end of lap 52, Hamilton pitted with 25.2s advantage to Vettel. When coming back out of the pits, Vettel moves into first, 2 seconds ahead of Hamilton. Ricciardo slotted in just behind Hamilton with Alonso only 1.2 seconds down on the Australian.

Just one lap later, Hamilton already got past Vettel to take back the lead he held during the entire race.

At about the same time, Button reports a complete shutdown of his car and parks alongside the track. With marshals unable to get the car cleared immediately, a yellow flag remained for the next two laps. Button was running 7th and saw vital points slip away from as his dashboard went black.

In the remaining battle for 6th, Raikkonen takes over the fight with Bottas, but Button earlier found that the Williams was too fast in the straights to get a serious attack in place. Hulkenberg and Vergne are immediately behind as well, while Magnussen is runnning 10, 3 seconds down on the pack.

More at the front, Vettel is backing up Ricciardo and Alonso. Both are in DRS range after gradually closing the gap on the German whose tyres are several laps older than the followers'.

Hamilton meanwhile kept it cool and finished the race at the two hour mark, having completed 60 laps, one less than normal. Vettel kept second ahead of Ricciardo and Alonso while Massa finished 5th. Jean-Eric Vergne who was handed a 5 second penalty got past 5 cars in the final laps. He finished 6th but will be classified 10th.

Bottas on the other hand completely lost control of his car on the final lap, having run out of tyres. He saw all queuing cars pass him in the final lap, effectively dropping out of the points to finish 11th, not far ahead of the Lotus duo.