Raikkonen looked set to compound Hamilton’s weekend-long Singapore troubles when he overtook the Mercedes driver for third place just past half distance in Sunday’s 61-lap race.
Advertisement
Raikkonen ran third after a mid-race overtaking move on Lewis Hamilton when Mercedes switched strategy and pitted the world champion for fresh ultra-soft tyres. That put Ferrari in a dilemma.
Ferrari responded a lap later by pulling in Raikkonen, but Hamilton was travelling fast enough on track to jump ahead.
Had Raikkonen stayed out to the finish, then the Ferrari driver would have held an initial advantage over Hamilton of around 25 seconds.
Scuderia Ferrari’s German driver Sebastian Vettel’s auto is seen after he retired from the qualifying session in Singapore on September 17, 2016, ahead of the Formula One Grand Prix night race.
As the team frantically weighed up the options, Raikkonen yelled over the radio, “Are we boxing (pitting) this lap?” only to get the reply from his engineer: “I’ll let you know”. “For sure it was a long way away and seemed out of reach after the poor start, but then I think we slowly got into the groove and especially in the last two stints the auto really came alive and we make good progress so it was good fun, I enjoyed it a lot”.
“Obviously, they managed to get in front of us again so we lost the place”.
Sebastian Vettel will line up on the Singapore Grand Prix grid with a new engine and gearbox following his qualifying mishap.
That was the same gap race victor Rosberg had over Daniel Ricciardo following the Red Bull driver’s own late extra stop, with the German managing to hold on to win by a mere 0.4s.
Advertisement
Finishing less than half-a-minute off race victor Nico Rosberg, Vettel says it was a shame a fortuitous safety vehicle didn’t arrive to potentially take him all the way the podium. “It’s not a quality of mine either, we are here to win and we’re not satisfied until it happens, but we’re progressing step by step and one day it will pay off”.
