Hamilton wins in SingaporeVettel, Raikkonen, Verstappen crashed out

Lewis Hamilton (Mercedes) wins the Singapore Grand Prix at Marina Bay Street Circuit, scoring his seventh win of the 2017 Formula One World Championship season and 60th F1 win in a career. It’s his third win in Singapore after he triumphed there in 2009 and 2014.

Daniel Ricciardo (Red Bull) and Valtteri Bottas (Mercedes) joined him on a podium in the race which offered us a plenty of action in the mixed weather conditions, with a start under rain and dry track at the end. The race ended after 57 laps instead of scheduled 61, because of 2-hour time limit.

Twelve drivers finished the race of twenty starters. Carlos Sainz (Toro Rosso) was fourth, ahead of Sergio Perez (Force India), Jolyon Palmer (Renault), Stoffel Vandoorne (McLaren), Lance Stroll (Williams), Romain Grosjean (Haas) and Esteban Ocon (Force India).

Pole-sitter Sebastian Vettel didn’t score points in Singapore so Hamilton increases his championship lead to 28 points (263:235) after fourteen races. Bottas is further 23 points behind Vettel.

Singapore Grand Prix start crash

The race had a wild start, with three front-runners dropping out of the race on the opening lap – pole sitter Sebastian Vettel, P2 starter Max Verstappen and P4 starter Kimi Raikkonen. The Finnish driver in the #7 Ferrari started well from the second row, beginning to overtake Max Verstappen, but a slight contact sent Raikkonen into his teammate’s car. Kimi’s car was sliding into Turn 1, hitting Verstappen and Fernando Alonso.

Vettel continued but crashed out few hundred meters later, handing the lead to Lewis Hamilton. Daniel Ricciardo, who started from P3, survived a chaos and took P2, ahead of Nico Hulkenberg, who started from P7.

Alonso tried to race with damaged car but he was forced to retire on Lap 9. The second Safety Car intervention followed on Lap 11 when Daniil Kvyat parked his car into the wall.

Lewis Hamilton, 2017 Singapore Grand Prix

Lewis Hamilton was in the lead from the opening lap to the checkered flag

In the first part of the race, the field was divided to wet-tyre and intermedia-tyre users. Hamilton and Ricciardo were on the intermedia tyres, making a change on lap 30 (Hamilton) and lap 29 (Ricciardo) respectively.

Marcus Ericsson’s crash caused one more Safety Car period late in the race but there were no changes on the top. Hamilton managed to make significant advantage on every restart, cruising to his seventh win of the season.