Lewis Hamilton unexpectedly vaulted into the lead of the World Championship for just the second time in the compelling 2014 season with victory in a dramatic night-time Singapore GP after the lights went out early on Nico Rosberg's race.
What had appeared set to be a tense race-long duel between the Mercedes title rivals from the front-row of the grid was denied by the recurrence of the all-conquering team's lingering Achilles heel - unreliability - as a control electronics problem meant Rosberg's W05 didn't even get away from the grid on the formation lap.
Forced to start from the end of the pitlane, Rosberg was able to get going at the back of the field but not to any meaningful extend as a litany of electronically-related glitches meant the hitherto championship leader was unable to even clear the backmarkers. A problematic pitstop then proved the end of his race after just 15 laps.
The stage therefore appeared set for Hamilton, who had converted his pole into the race lead, to ease to victory and a three-point championship lead and that's the way things looked set to go as he moved away from Sebastian Vettel's Red Bull through the first two stints.
However, not for the first time in the Singapore GP's history, the intervention of a mid-race Safety Car threw sudden unexpected drama into proceedings and on this occasion it made Hamilton's life an awful lot harder.
With his lead cancelled out, and having not yet made the mandatory switch to the soft tyres, Hamilton was forced to unleash all his trademark speed at the restart and open up enough of an advantage over the Red Bull-led chasing pack, who were all running to the end of the race.
He duly opened up a 26-second lead over Vettel, and although he returned to the track behind the World Champion after his eventual final stop, his tyre advantage was such that he made easy meat of the German just one lap later.
Vettel hung on, however, to finish second for his best result of the year ahead of team-mate Daniel Ricciardo and Fernando Alonso.
More to follow...
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