Singapore - It was slated to be the longest, hottest, most difficult and tiring race of the season. It turned out to be all of those, as well as having one of the closest and most exciting finishes as well.
But for Nico Rosberg, who started the race as the leader of the championship, the Singapore Grand Prix ended before it even began: The Mercedes driver, who at the previous two races clashed with his own teammate in controversial moves, failed to get his car in gear on the formation lap two minutes before the race started.
Rosberg would drop out of the race only a few laps later as his teammate, Lewis Hamilton, sped off into the distance in the lead. It would end up being one of the tightest races of the season up and down the pack, and Hamilton had to fight to the end.
But if Rosberg's luck was clearly out, Hamilton - who had scored pole position on Saturday by seven-thousandths of a second - fought through the heat and extreme humidity of the streets of Singapore for two hours in what would be the most strategic race of the season as teams and drivers fought through tire and pit stop strategy choices that would shape their destinies.
After losing the lead with less than 10 laps left due to a final pit stop and a different strategy than the drivers right behind him, Hamilton made a final pass with just eight laps left in the race to take his seventh victory of the season and his second in Singapore, where he won driving for McLaren in 2009.
'I was dreaming it last night but you never think it will really happen,' said Hamilton. 'I was looking for that clean weekend, and this has been it. It has not been perfect for the weekend, because Nico didn't finish. So there are things we can still work on.'
The result was exactly the one he needed to pass Rosberg into the lead of championship: Hamilton now has 241 points to 238 for Rosberg. The two Red Bull drivers, Sebastian Vettel and Daniel Ricciardo, finished the race in second and third position. Ricciardo is third in the series with 181 points.
'It's very, very tough,' said Rosberg. 'The way in which it happened, not even leaving the grid and everything. It was not good.'
'It was just that the steering wheel didn't work and so the whole car wasn't working,' he added, referring to the gearshift being on the steering wheel. 'We need to find out what it is because again that's a reliability problem. We've had quite a few this year and that's our weakness.'
The Singapore Grand Prix is the longest of the season, running the limit of two hours, and since it has run every year since 2008 it also has a perfect score of having at least one safety car session each race due to accidents. The series' only night race, run under the spotlights in downtown Singapore, is a grueling challenge on a narrow track that has inevitably led to crashes.
On Sunday, if the first drama of the race happened just before the start, the second drama came at the halfway point of the 61-lap race when, after a small collision on Lap 31 between the Force India of Sergio Pérez and the Sauber of Adrian Sutil, the front wing of the Force India broke off and shattered across the track, leaving dangerous debris everywhere. The safety car was brought out for six laps while the marshals cleaned up the debris. While Fernando Alonso in a Ferrari made a pit stop at this point, neither of the Red Bulls nor Hamilton did so, and the Ferrari driver dropped from second to fourth. But while the Red Bulls had planned to run to the end of the race, Hamilton still had another pit stop to make.
That meant building up enough lead after the restart of the race to return to the track in the lead after his eventual pit stop. After Lap 38, in just a single lap he had built up a lead of 3.2 seconds on Vettel. By Lap 45, Hamilton led Vettel by 15.3 seconds. He would need nearly 27 seconds, the team calculated.
By Lap 51 Hamilton said his tires were wearing out too much and he would not make it much further.
'My right rear is seriously worn,' said Hamilton on the next lap, when his lead had advanced to 25.2 seconds.
Then, with less than 10 laps left Hamilton came in for the final pit stop. It was perfectly executed, but Hamilton returned to the track between the two Red Bulls, with Vettel's car just under his nose. Hamilton on fresh tires, but driving on a track where overtaking is nearly impossible. On Lap 54, seeing his chance, he made a lunge and passed Vettel, whose more worn tires were no longer a match to Hamilton's.
'My tires were dropping off and I was worried if the safety car came out that would cause me problems,' Hamilton said. 'I came out and saw Sebastian coming across, but I knew they were doing a two stop and I was on good pace.'
Hamilton may have been home free - barring an accident - but the racing excitement continued as Ricciardo fought Vettel for second, and Alonso fought Ricciardo for third, with the three drivers less than a second apart in the final laps of the race. But it was too difficult for them to pass, and the drivers finished in that position.
It was Vettel's best finish of the season. 'It's a circuit that I really enjoy,' Vettel said. 'It's a tough one, it's two hours.
'It is quite hot, obviously the cars are sliding a lot so you have to focus a lot,' he added. 'We all enjoy it as drivers because it is such a big challenge.'
The difficulty of the race was compounded by it being the first race of the series' enforcement of a call to reduce assistance from the team to the drivers over the car radios.
As great a race as it was, Hamilton said it could have been better.
'It would have been a hardcore race if Nico had been in the race with me,' said Hamilton.
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