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Mercedes’ Lewis
Hamilton made the most of a three-stop strategy to win Singapore and claim
the lead of the world championship. He did three opening stints on the P
Zero Red supersoft before completing the race, which ran to the two-hour
time limit rather than the scheduled 61 laps, on the P Zero Yellow soft.
However, he was closely challenged by Red Bull’s reigning world champion
Sebastian Vettel, who ran a two-stop strategy from fourth on the grid.
Vettel did two opening stints on the supersoft and then a final stint on the
soft at the end of the grand prix, when the car was at its lightest on low
fuel. His team-mate Daniel Ricciardo followed the same strategy to finish
third in front of the Ferrari of Fernando Alonso.
This allowed Vettel to claim the lead in the closing stages of the race,
illustrating perfectly how tyre strategy can make a crucial difference. With
a time gap of around two seconds between the compounds, all the drivers
started on the faster supersoft. How they used the tyres after that proved
crucial, providing the key to the strategy.
Singapore kept up its 100% safety car record following contact between two
competitors halfway through the race. Alonso and McLaren driver Jenson
Button took the opportunity of the seven-lap safety car period to pit for
soft tyres. Both Red Bull and Williams drivers had already pitted for soft
tyres before the safety car, meaning that their options were open after
running both compounds in the first half of the race. After the safety car
came in, Hamilton needed to extend his lead to around 25 seconds: the time
needed to get in and out of the pits. But the Mercedes driver re-emerged in
second place after his final stop on lap 52, and used his pace advantage to
take the lead back from Vettel shortly afterwards.
Paul Hembery said: “Again we saw another very tense and exciting race
where different tyre strategies formed a crucial part of the outcome. In the
closing stages of the grand prix we had Hamilton on newer soft tyres behind
Vettel on older soft tyres, meaning he had to overtake to seal the race
victory. Before then, we had the situation where Hamilton, on the faster
supersoft tyre, had to build up a crucial half-minute or so gap after the
safety car to give him enough time to get in and out of the pits and change
to the soft tyre. So, as we have seen before, despite the fact that there
were different strategies at work, it was an extremely
close finish.”
Truth-O-Meter:
We predicted three stops for the race: start on the supersoft, change to
supersoft again on lap 20, supersoft again on lap 36 and then finish the
race on the soft from lap 51. Lewis Hamilton followed the sequence we
expected but stopped on lap 15, lap 28, and lap 52. However, this was
affected by the safety car, which made a big difference to the pit stop
timing. |
