Red Bull’s Sebastian Vettel took a commanding win at the Singapore GP after Lewis Hamilton’s McLaren retired from the race. Jenson Button in the sister McLaren came home second with Ferrari’s Fernando Alonso on the third step of the podium. Alonso now leads Vettel by 29 points in the standings.
During the race Vettel led from Button, Pastor Maldonado and Alonso until the safety car came out on lap 33, to clear the car of Narain Karthikeyan. This changed the race as pitted and the felid became mixed. The re-start came on lap 39 although Maldonado had dropped down the order until hydraulics problem forced him to retire - he had qualified second.
Slightly after the restart Michael Schumacher smashed into the back of Toro Rosso’s Jean-Eric Vergne, who was battling with the Mexican Sauber driver Sergio Perez. Schumacher later admitted to the stewards that it was his mistake and he received a 10-place grid penalty for the next race in Japan.
After the race the Red Bull driver Vettel said “It’s one of the toughest races all year. It’s very long, we did the full two hours, the circuit is a killer, there are many bumps and there is no room for error. Obviously I benefited from Lewis's failure, which I could see for a couple of laps. It's an incredible weekend for all of us. We have a lot of races left, we just have to use the momentum and keep pushing.”
Hamilton’s retirement means he is all but out of the Championship hunt and he will be unable to catch Alonso in the remaining six races slips to fourth, 52 points off the lead with only 150 available, seven points behind Lotus's Kimi Raikkonen.
There were several investigations into accidents after the race. Vettel was looked at for an incident at the restart in which he slowed unexpectedly and Button nearly hit him – this was later ignored. Webber was given a drive-through penalty for passing Kamui Kobayashi off the track on lap 50, this dropped him down and promoted Perez to 10th.
Paul Di Resta took an impressive fourth place after a strong qualifying saw him start sixth. The second Lotus of Romain Grosjean was seventh, ahead of Ferrari’s Felipe Massa, Toro Rosso’s Daniel Ricciardo and Red Bull’s Mark Webber.
