Rosberg holds on to win Singapore GP, reclaim F1 lead

A late decision to call off a fourth Rosberg pit stop turned the race on its head and the Silver Arrows driver was thrilled with the result.

Rosberg and his Mercedes led comfortably for the most of the race but then had to watch Red Bull Racing’s Daniel Ricciardo slowly eat into his lead.

It started with carnage when Nico Hulkenberg’s Force India was destroyed after being tagged by Carlos Sainz’s Toro Rosso and the debris punctured a tire of the Valtteri Bottas’ Williams. The incident sparked an immediate safety vehicle period as the debris was cleared.

The safety vehicle went in on lap three.

Ricciardo, in second place, switched tyres on the 16th lap where he was fitted with a new set of supersoft tyres. “I need a couple of strong weekends to get back to where I need to be”. Without the fear of dropping back to third or lower, they had nothing to lose on Lap 47 by putting Ricciardo onto fresh supersofts of his own and attacking Rosberg.

Scuderia Ferrari, meanwhile, missed the podium entirely.

Red Bull expected to have pace, and Ferrari hoped to be able to challenge at the front too.

Ferrari too chose to call Raikkonen in on the next lap, but Hamilton’s out-lap on fresher tyres was strong enough to get him the jump on the Ferrari and into third.

Things soon became a little less predictable though.

Hamilton, who has been off colour here this weekend, was a whopping seven tenths of a second slower than Rosberg in qualifying, and the 31-year-old Briton failed to make any impact on his title rival in Sunday’s race. To be able to do 36 laps on one set of soft tyres, in this heat, and to keep my position under pressure from Kvyat is a big achievement. The Ferrari pitted the following lap however, and Lewis followed a lap later.

Inspired by Hamilton’s move, Red Bull opted to bring Ricciardo in one lap later for super-soft tires and make life hard for Rosberg at the front.

“It was very risky but I think we must give credit to race control, because they restarted the race pretty quickly”.

Rosberg topped the podium for the eighth occasion this season via a 0.488 second victory, but his heart would have been in his mouth in the closing stages after Ricciardo had threatened to gate crash his party.

Rosberg held off a dramatic late charge from Daniel Ricciardo to win the Singapore Grand Prix and, in doing so, moved ahead of Hamilton in the title race.

The German, who now leads teammate Lewis Hamilton by eight points in the championship, says his lap had been compromised by lapped cars.

Kevin Magnussen was a beneficiary of the first lap chaos and steered his Renault to tenth place, giving the team its first points since the Russian Grand Prix.

Like Rosberg, Ricciardo had to lap Esteban Gutierrez and Felipe Massa’s 11th and 12th-placed cars, costing him crucial time.

Valtteri Bottas was forced to retire from the race early after an issue with his seatbelt and a minor engine problem, while Jenson Button also parked up in the McLaren garage with 18 laps remaining.