Alonso and Raikkonen gamble and make podium but McLaren
lose out
Sebastian Vettel produced one of the most dominant
performances of his career to win the Singapore GP at a canter and move yet
another step closer to a fourth world title.
The German's seventh win of his increasingly imperious
season and third in a row proved as dazzling as the lights that guide the
tortuous Marina Bay circuit as a brief challenge by Nico Rosberg into the first
corner and the annoyance of a mid-race Safety Car aside, Vettel left his rivals
for dust to win by more than half a minute.
With a championship lead of 60 points - more than two
race victories with just six rounds to go - the World Champion's defence of his
drivers' crown is proving increasingly academic.
But while the arrival of a lap-25 Safety Car after Daniel
Ricciardo had crashed into the wall may not have prevented the Singapore
winner's trophy from going to Vettel for a third straight year, as the Red Bull
flier raced away at over two seconds a lap, it did spectacularly open up the
battle for the remaining podium positions as a number of cars gambled on earlier
second pit stops.
The chief beneficiary of that tactic was the ever-canny
Fernando Alonso, who came through to finish second to his perennial rival
Vettel for the third successive event despite Ferrari having only arguably been
the fourth-fastest car up until the race.
Incredibly, Alonso was joined on the podium by his 2014
team-mate Kimi Raikkonen who, despite suffering from back pains since Saturday,
gritted his Finnish teeth and raced hard to come from 13th to third.
But there was, however, late heartache for McLaren, who
having gambled on the same bold long-running strategy in a bid to gain an
elusive 2013 podium, couldn't quite make their tyres last to the end and saw
Jenson Button slide from third to seventh inside the final six laps.
Button wasn't the only one left to regret the closing
minutes as Mark Webber, having lost track position when he didn't stop under
the Safety Car, saw his charge back up to fourth halted when a water pressure
fault developed on his Red Bull.
Still, the pace gap to his team-mate at the front had
been something of a chasm and the rare mechanical retirement for Red Bull still
didn't prevent them from further pulling clear in the Constructors'
Championship.
Singapore GP - Race in 60 Seconds
For Mercedes it proved a case of what might have been as
despite Nico Rosberg running second to Vettel for much of the race, the team
ended the race with the German and team-mate Lewis Hamilton battling over
fourth and fifth places respectively after the Brackley team chose not to pit
under the safety car.
While they, along with Webber, scythed back through the
field after their later stops on fresher tyres, and were lapping considerably
quicker than both Alonso and Raikkonen at the end, the Mercedes pair rain out
of time to make it back towards the podium.
Felipe Massa was sixth in the second Ferrari, ahead of
McLaren pair Button and Sergio Perez. Nico Hulkenberg (Sauber) and Adrian Sutil
(Force India) completed the points-paying positions after the latter's
team-mate Paul Di Resta crashed out amid the late drama.
The race though belonged to just one man - Sebastian
Vettel.
Rosberg may have been the German closest challenger for
the majority of the day but the pair were effectively in separate races given
the World Champion's supreme show of speed under the lights.
The Mercedes driver had threatened to make a race of it
when he outdragged the pole position on his inside run to the first corner, but
blew his chances when he ran wide under braking, allowing Vettel to cut back
round the inside of him at Turns Two and Three.
Crowd boo Vettel in Singapore
And from there the World Champion was gone: within four
laps Vettel had established a six-second lead and by the time of Ricciardo's
untimely 25-lap accident, it was a thoroughly comfortable 11.3s.
But it was the German's speed on the lap-30 restart that
truly underlined his supremacy, and current confidence, with the RB9. With Red
Bull guarding against the prospect of Alonso's long-running plan coming to
fruition, the pit wall gave what is a rare instruction in this day and age of
F1 for Vettel to push flat out to really open up an impenetrable gap to the
challengers behind.
That he managed it was hardly a surprise but it was the
26-year-old's speed that was truly mesmerizing as he pulled away from Rosberg
by an astonishing rate of two seconds per lap to the point where he was 14
seconds ahead just six laps after the re-start.
"The car was incredible," lauded Vettel on the
podium to Sky Sports F1's Martin Brundle as he soaked up his 33rd career win,
which moves him one ahead of Alonso in sole possession of fourth place in the
all-time list.
Ted's Singapore Notebook
"It doesn't just happen like that by accident or by
luck, there's hard work behind it which I appreciate and it's just a pleasure
to drive it around this crazy track."
Alonso's F138 had appeared to be anything but a pleasure
to take around the bumpy track and Alonso admitted that the state of the
championship meant that they had no option but to gamble on a 30-plus-lap
closing stint in a bid to limit the damage.
"It was a risky move but we have nothing to
lose," the Spaniard acknowledged. "To finish second in the race or
fifth, it doesn't matter too much to be honest. We pushed, we took cars of the
tyres, the car was performing really well in the race."
"They [Red Bull] were too fast all weekend."
Alonso added that the runner-up finish "tastes like
a victory for us" and given the unrelenting speed of the Vettel/Red Bull
combination, it's hard to see the Spaniard - let alone anyone else - knocking
Vettel off his familiar perch before he's surely crowned a quadruple title
winner.
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