As the five red lights went out under the sparkling lights, Vettel looked in trouble at the first corner but managed to take back his position from Rosberg and pull away in an all so familiar fashion. And there was no looking back for him despite a safety car intervention. With Webber out of the race in the final lap the Red Bull lost a few points but still managed to keep a 103 point lead over Ferrari.
Sebastian Vettel
Three in three it was at Singapore for the three time Champion and he looks pretty much on his way to a fourth title which might come in as early as India, considering his dominant form. That’s unless Fernando Alonso gets some voodoo magic to spoil Vettel’s remaining races of the season and gets a couple of wins for himself with a 60-point deficit to catch up. While the qualifying gamble paid off, there was no room for complacency for Vettel and he just went on from stronger to strongest during the race.
The safety car seemed the only car on the circuit that could keep him behind. Once the yellow lights were switched off and the safety car went into the pit-lane, Vettel restarted the onslaught with some fastest laps in the RBR09 with a clear objective of pulling away from his rivals and pitting in after lap 40. He managed to keep his tyre comparatively cooler and eased the pace off a bit in the last lap to save them and saw the chequered flag 32.6 seconds ahead of Alonso and Kimi Raikkonen. At the podium, it was familiar sight of champagne, the dreaded finger and the very prominent boos for Vettel. But Vettel shrugged them off and remained unperturbed by them.
Mark Webber
The retiring Aussie had hoped of repeating his feat of 2010 with a podium finish at Singapore, but unfortunately for him ended up parking his Red Bull on the final lap and even got penalized for getting a lift back to the garage from Fernando Alonso. The fourth place finish in qualifying had looked promising but Webber was slow to start off the grid as Alonso took a clean line squeezing Webber and Romain Grosjean to take third place.
But Webber hung on and was charging after Alonso and Raikkonen on a fresh pair of tyres, after pitting in on lap 41. In the closing stages, when he was instructed to start short-shifting because of an engine problem, he lost places as the Red Bull lost steam, and eventually retired on the final lap with an engine failure. He hitched a ride back with Alonso, but running across the track and flagging down the Ferrari earned him his third stewards’ reprimand of the season, which meant a ten-place grid penalty at the next round in Yeongam, South Korea.
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