Lewis Hamilton won a slow-burning Singapore Grand Prix to take the championship lead at the expense of his team-mate, Nico Rosberg, who failed to finish due to technical issues on his Mercedes.
A procedural race was brought alive by a safety car on lap 31, timed awkwardly enough to throw pit strategies into chaos. Hamilton, however, navigated the curveball with ease, bringing his Mercedes home with a 13 second advantage over the two Red Bulls.
Hamilton’s good day, and Rosberg’s troubles, began before the start, with an electronics issue leaving Rosberg stranded on the grid before the parade lap. Rosberg would eventually start from the pit-lane, make minimal progress through the back-markers and then retire at his first pitstop after the same electronics glitch left him stranded yet again.
Rosberg’s absence gave Hamilton a clear run at the first corner and he duly took the lead ahead of the battling Red Bulls and Ferraris.
Fernando Alonso beat the Red Bulls off the line but out-braked himself and took to the run off in order to keep his second place. However, he did cede the place to Sebastian Vettel further around the first lap, thereby avoiding any penalty for exceeding track limits.
The race then settled into a rhythm, with Hamilton leading Vettel, Alonso, Daniel Ricciardo, Kimi Raikkonen and Felipe Massa.
Adrian Sutil started the first wave of pitstops on lap 8, with no substantial changes to the lead group other than Massa jumping Raikkonen for fifth on the undercut, and Massa’s team-mate Valterri Bottas jumping Jenson Button for seventh.
Massa then went for a second undercut, starting the second round of pitstops as early as lap 23. Again, there were minimal changes up front, save for Alonso jumping Vettel into second place.
The relative calm was then disrupted on lap 31 when Adrian Sutil chopped (seemingly unknowingly) across Sergio Perez’s front wing, sending a thousand carbon fibre pieces across the track and necessitating the safety car.
Ferrari chose to pit both their cars for a third time, while Red Bull and Williams elected to keep their drivers out on a revised two-stop strategy that would see them run around 35 laps on a single set of tyres to the end of the race. Hamilton also didn’t pit, although it became apparent Mercedes’ intention was for the Brit to pit a third time, later in the race.
As soon as the safety car pitted on lap 37, Hamilton put the hammer down, pulling out a 25 second lead by lap 52. Although he emerged from his stop behind Vettel, it was half a lap before the Mercedes’ fresher tyres had Hamilton back in front and heading for victory.
Behind him, Vettel managed to keep Ricciardo at bay for a Red Bull two-three, with Alonso tracking them home in fourth and Massa an anonymous fifth.
In the bottom half of the top ten, all hell broke loose in the final five laps as those on worn, old tyres (Bottas, Button and Raikkonen) tried desperately to hold on against those who pitted with only a handful of laps remaining for third stops and fresher tyres (Jean-Eric Vergne, Sergio Perez and Kevin Magnussen).
Button’s car gave up the ghost with five laps to run while Bottas held on valiantly until the final lap when he skated wide and lost four places in one hit.
In contrast, Vergne overtook at least eight cars in quick succession (including taking Pastor Maldonado off-track, for which he received an (inconsequential) five-second penalty) to come home sixth, with Perez doing similar to snatch seventh.
Aside from the astounding grip levels, theirs were two highly impressive drives, with Vergne recovering from an earlier track-limits penalty for a season-best result and Perez recovering from his clash with Sutil.
Raikkonen then somehow held on to eighth with Nico Hulkenberg ninth for Force India ahead of Magnussen in the final points-paying position.
Bottas and Daniil Kvyat missed the points, as did the two Lotuses, who had looked like pinching a point or two until the army of fresh tyre-shod midfielders crushed their hopes.
Alongside Button and Rosberg, both Saubers were retirements, as was the luckless Kamui Kobayashi whose car couldn’t even complete the parade lap.
After coming into the race with a 22 point deficit, Hamilton now leaves Singapore with a 3 point lead with only 5 races remaining. The title showdown is well and truly on now!
| Pos. | # | Driver | Team |
| 1 | 44 | Lewis Hamilton | Mercedes |
| 2 | 1 | Sebastian Vettel | Red Bull |
| 3 | 3 | Daniel Ricciardo | Red Bull |
| 4 | 14 | Fernando Alonso | Ferrari |
| 5 | 19 | Felipe Massa | Williams |
| 6 | 25 | Jean-Eric Vergne* | Toro Rosso |
| 7 | 11 | Sergio Perez | Force India |
| 8 | 7 | Kimi Raikkonen | Ferrari |
| 9 | 27 | Nico Hulkenberg | Force India |
| 10 | 20 | Kevin Magnussen | McLaren |
| 11 | 77 | Valtteri Bottas | Williams |
| 12 | 13 | Pastor Maldonado | Lotus |
| 13 | 8 | Romain Grosjean | Lotus |
| 14 | 26 | Daniil Kvyat | Toro Rosso |
| 15 | 9 | Marcus Ericsson | Caterham |
| 16 | 17 | Jules Bianchi | Marussia |
| 17 | 4 | Max Chilton | Marussia |
