F1: Hamilton dominates as title rival breaks down

The championship battle is getting very tasty indeed. Coming into Singapore, Rosberg had a 22 point lead to teammate Lewis Hamilton. In qualifying, Rosberg was beaten to pole by Hamilton by a margin of about 7 thousandths of a second. One would expect Rosberg to repeat his Singapore 2013 performance by making a brave lunge into the first corner. Sadly that wasn’t the case. Rosberg, on the install lap, complained of electronic gremlins. His steering wheel failed, which led Mercedes to switching the faulty wheel out for a spare. On the grid, as everyone pulled away for the warm-up lap, the spare failed as well, which left him with no clutch, and hence, was unable to pull away. He was wheeled into the pitlane, where Mercedes scrambled to try and get Rosberg’s ailing W05 to start. Elsewhere on the circuit, the CT-05 of Kobayashi ground to a halt even before they formed up on the grid for the start. The car suffered from both brake failure and electronic problems.

OneShift Editorial Team

22 Sep 2014

Without Rosberg to worry about, Hamilton made a blistering start, and was consistently pulling away from the fast-starting trio of Ricciardo, Vettel and Alonso. As the race went on, Rosberg’s Mercedes became increasingly ill.His paddle shifters have malfunctioned, and he lost the use of his ERS. Without the extra 180bhp, and with the car jumping abruptly from gear to gear, he struggled to get past the lone Caterham piloted by Marcus Ericsson. When it time for Rosberg’s pitstop, he had to put the car in neutral and shut the car off and allow whatever momentum that the car still has left to roll into the pit box. The pit crew changed his tyres, and performed a reboot with a new wheel. The rear axle was jacked up to allow Rosberg to put the car in first without stalling, but the car refused to get into gear. The final decision was to retire the car.

Out on the track, Sutil was defending from the Force India of Perez, when Perez was forced into the wall. The contact damaged the front wing of the VJM07, which eventually failed and slid underneath the car in dramatic fashion. With a severely wounded car, Perez was easily lapped. Thankfully, because of the debris strewn on the track, the safety car was called out. Perez boxed, got a new front wing, and proceeded to unlap himself.

The safety car threw Mercedes’ original strategy out of the window. Hamilton stopped with less than 15 laps to go to change onto the primes. He may have lost the lead, but with a fresh set of primes, Hamilton breezed past the RB10 of Vettel, and gradually opened the gap in the last few laps.

Bottas was having his own battles with Raikkonen, Perez, Vergne and Magnusson. Out of the 5 drivers, Vergne had the freshest rubber, which meant he was able to breeze past the 4 cars to claim a career-best 6th. Bottas looked like he could hold on to at least 7th, but with a severe lack of grip, he struggled to slow the car, and that little mistake was enough to let the trio past.

Hamilton crossed the line in P1, and he will be able to add his 2nd Singapore Grand Prix winner’s trophy to the one he picked up in 2009. He now leads the standings by 2 points.

For only the second time this season, Vettel beat Ricciardo, and as for Alonso, well he had to settle for fourth. Both Saubers retired with all manner of problems with the car.

Pictures used for illustration purposes only.

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