I got home right in time before the lights went out. And what a race we got to see in the dark night of Singapore! Hamilton was able to maintain his lead at the start. Vettel managed to get past Maldonado on the first corners and the Venezuelan was also overtaken by Button in his McLaren. Kimi starting in P12 passed Hulkenberg and gained a position. Hamilton and Vettel seemed to be cruising away from their rivals but Kimi instead got stuck behind Schumacher. Even using DRS didn´t make overtaking possible.
After the first pit stops the situation in the front was unchanged. It seemed that no one could prevent Hamilton from winning the race. Until on lap 23... Hamilton´s car stopped on the track due to a gear box failure! What a frustrating turn in terms of Hamilton´s championship hunt. But this meant one thing only: Vettel took the lead and I kept my fingers crossed down to my elboes that there wouldn´t be any alternator or other technical issues today!
More colourful events were about to take place soon. Karthikeyan in his HRT crashed into the wall and safety car was deployed. Right before the restart Vettel was warming up his tyres when he suddenly braked and Button behind him was very close to crashing into Seb´s car! Luckily that didn´t happen! After the restart it was soon time for another safety car episode. This time Schumi crashed into the rear of Vergne´s Toro Rosso and both men were out of the race.Maldonado was also forced to retire the race due to a hydraulics problem.
After the two safety car episodes it became clear that there was not time to drive all the 61 laps planned as 2 hours is the limit that one race is allowed to last. So finally there were 59 laps driven in the night of Singapore. Vettel was finally able to clinch his second win of the season in his fascinating bling-bling helmet! Button finished 2nd and in spite of the fact that Ferrari is seriously lacking speed at the moment Fernando Alonso managed to make his way to the podium as well! Di Resta finished 4th which is the best result in his career so far. Rosberg finished 5th and Kimi 6th. Once again Kimi fought his way from the midfield of the grid and finished in the points.
We saw a team order from Lotus today. Kimi was driving behind his team mate Grosjean but with 13 laps to go the Frenchman was told on the team radio that "Kimi is faster than you" and after that Grosjean made no effort to prevent the Iceman from overtaking him. I know I´ve been critisizing team orders a lot, especially those given by Ferrari. And I have to admit this one didn´t seem right to me, either although they aren´t forbidden in Formula 1 at the moment. On one hand the team order today was very understandable as Grosjean doesn´t have any chance to win the championship any more and Kimi does... But on the other hand team orders are against the spirit of sportsmanship and fair play. But I do admit that it´s easier to accept a team order from Lotus than from Ferrari! And it´s just because I´m a fan of Kimi, it´s as simple as that. So things are almost never eiher "black" or "white" but there´re also shades of "grey" depending on the angle that you´re looking from...
It was actually kind of disarming to see Sebastian stroking his Abbey after the race. It was soooo fabulous to see him winning again! So the finger is back! Seb managed to decrease the gap to Alonso which is currently 29 points. So the championship battle is wide open... It seems to me that Seb should definitely spend some more time in sauna! (I read in an interview that in order to prepare him for the humidity and heat of Singapore GP Seb´s Finnish trainer Heikki had told Seb to spend more time in the sauna... :) ) Thank you Sebastian for making my day! What an awesome drive today!
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