DANIEL Ricciardo had the enthusiastic Marina Bay crowd cheering with excitement as he rapidly closed in on race leader Nico Rosberg in the Singapore Grand Prix – but it would have needed one more lap for the Perth Formula One star to snatch victory.
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Red Bull attempted a similar strategy to that of Hamilton with Ricciardo – taking on the softer, fresher tyre compound – in an attempt to catch Rosberg.
Hamilton said he had never got on top of the vehicle all weekend. “He drove the race in the same way, he had a great start, controlled the pace and on the contrary Lewis didn’t have a good weekend – he was lacking laps to find out about the right set-up [in practice], so he couldn’t really choose the direction and that caused him to go backwards from then on”. Of course Daniel tried to pull one up on me with the pit stop at the end there, and we knew it was going to be tight at the end there but it worked out.
“I’m not going to stand up here and be disappointed”, he told podium host Martin Brundle. “We gave it a good shot and got within half-a-second”. This weekend has been a tricky one for me but I am glad to get some points for the team. “His win was fully deserving”.
The safety vehicle was called into action when Nico Hulkenberg and Carlos Sainz Jr tangled at the start, with the Force India ending up in the pitwall.
It means Rosberg now leads the championship by eight points.
The Scuderia Toro Rosso driver found himself racing with a damaged auto nearly from the start after being an unwilling victim of the start line incident that eliminated Nico Hülkenberg, but his afternoon completely unravelled when the stewards brought him into the pits to remove a piece of loose bodywork they felt was unsafe.
Having dodged a lizard in practice, the other Red Bull of Max Verstappen did even better to dodge a race-start pile-up when the Force India of Nico Hulkenberg was shunted in front of Verstappen by the two Toro Rossos. “I expect him to continue like that so I’ve got make sure that I do the same”.
It was Rosberg’s third victory in succession and eighth of the year, compared with six for Hamilton. The four-time world champion has had a lot of bad luck this year and he is driving better than his results would indicate, with Singapore being another example of the performance the Ferrari man still has.
He regained the position on the third and final stops.
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However, the advantage of the new tyres soon diminished hugely and although Rosberg was pushed all the way, Ricciardo juts could not close the gap fully.
