Lewis Hamilton’s Singapore Grand Prix victory should have been an easy one. His main competition and team-mate retired after just 20 or so laps, but a mid-race Safety Car made things much harder for the Briton.
Hamilton had to give it everything to pull a gap to the chasing pack of Fernando Alonso, Daniel Ricciardo and Sebastian Vettel. He put in qualifying lap after qualifying lap to eventually hold a 25 second advantage, but still had to pass Vettel after his final stop.
His victory has earned him high praise from the Mercedes bosses, with non-executive chairman Niki Lauda claiming Hamilton “is worth his money I can tell you that!
“He won the race because he drove a sensational race – nothing more to say. Hard, hard and tough.”
Mercedes motorsport boss Toto Wolff and technical boss Paddy Lowe were equally impressed, with the latter describing Hamilton’s drive a “fantastic performance” to take a “hard-earned win”.
“That was really awesome,” said Wolff. “These are the Lewis Hamilton days. These are the days when you recognise how great he is and it makes the difference between the superstars and the stars.”
Lowe added: “Lewis delivered a fantastic performance. The pace was strong and our tyre endurance better than that of our competitors.
“We had hoped to pull the full pit-stop gap over Vettel before Lewis made his final stop but the tyres didn’t quite last long enough. That left Lewis with a little work to do when he emerged from the pits, but he enjoyed a significant performance advantage on fresh tyres and made a good pass into Turn Seven.
“It was a very controlled drive and a hard-earned win.”
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