Lewis Hamilton prayed for a miracle at the Singapore Grand Prix and it was granted; with a thrilling win under the spotlights of the Marina Bay circuit. Weathering the rain and intense heat, avoiding a shocking crash at the first turn, and skilfully managing three safety cars periods, Lewis earned his seventh victory of the season.
It was epic race day stuff from the triple World Champion, who had been left mystified after qualifying in fifth place the previous day. However, he held his nerve, maintained solid pace, and did not put a wheel wrong as the Grand Prix went to the full two-hour time limit. His Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport teammate, Valtteri Bottas, also ensured it was a double podium for the Silver Arrows, by taking third place.
Lewis, who now celebrates 60 career wins in F1, said: “God blessed me today for sure! I capitalised on the incident, I mean who would have known that would happen? It couldn’t be a more perfect scenario really for us, being that we are at a circuit where we really had not a lot of hope. We really had to just bank on potentially a good start and maybe a bit of strategy, just to get us one or two places forward, so you can’t imagine how happy I am.”
The drama unfolded on the first lap as Sebastian Vettel tagged Max Verstappen, Kimi Raikkonen, who in turn hit Fernando Alonso. It was an accident that saw all four drivers eliminated with damaged cars; but in turn an incident that also elevated Lewis to the front of the pack. The Silver Arrows racer then set about clocking quicker and quicker lap times on intermediate tyres and was still going faster than his rivals who had switched to the quicker dry-specification tyres. Lewis was simply unstoppable; and now the winning result in Singapore opens up a 28 point lead for him at the top of the drivers’ championship table.
Lewis added: “Normally when it rains, you’re kind of a little bit apprehensive. It’s a little bit nerve wracking because it makes it so much trickier for us. We’ve never even driven in the rain here. But there are a couple of us that particularly love those conditions more than maybe others. I just know that when those conditions happen, it’s more of a lottery and there’s more opportunity.”
Meanwhile, Valtteri has now taken 10 podiums in 14 races to help the Silver Arrows record a 102-point lead over Ferrari in the constructors’ championship.
Valtteri said: “The start was definitely quite special and it came to me and Lewis in the end. I got a bad start, so I had plenty of time to observe what was happening at the front and just try to avoid any debris and impacts. But after the starting point we had for this weekend after such a tricky Friday and Saturday, it’s a really good result for us as a team. Our approach today, it was all about damage-limitation. I think this was pretty good damage limitation, so we can be quite happy about that!”
Full results from the 2017 Singapore Grand Prix are available, here.
Credit Monster