Nico Rosberg won the Singapore GP in spite of the huge pressure Daniel Ricciardo put on him in the last few laps. The Australian ended 2n, less than 1s off the victory, while Lewis Hamilton completed the podium.
A bad start by Max Verstappen caused an accident between Hülkenberg and Sainz in which the German was left out of the race and the Safety Car came out. Rosberg led ahead of Ricciardo, Hamilton, Räikkönen, Alonso, Kvyat, Sainz,Verstappen and Massa. Bottas and Button had to pit during the SC due to a puncture and a broken front wing respectively. Sainz was shown a black and orange flag for the damage on his side-pot which sent him down to last position.
Verstappen was the first one of the drivers in front to pit and went down to P14 with a new set of supersofts, but he didn’t manage to undercut Kvyat and Alonso. This led to a beautiful battle on track between the Russian driver and his replacement at Red Bull, who was unable to overtake Kvyat.
After all the pit stops, Rosberg was still leading with a 5s gap with Ricciardo, while Hamilton was 13s behind with Räikkönen right behind him. Alonso was on P5 ahead of Kvyat, while Verstappen pitted again, desperate because he couldn’t overtake Kvyat. Magnussen, Vettel, Gutiérrez y Pérez completed the points positions at that moment.
Räikkönen managed to overtake Hamilton on track for P3 before he pitted for the second time. However, many laps later, Hamilton decided to go for a 3rd pit stop and tricked Ferrari into sending Räikkönen in one lap later, which made him lose the podium. Ricciardo reacted to this by pitting as well for a new set of supersofts. He was 27 seconds behind Rosberg and was getting closer to Rosberg every lap.
Even though he was less than a second behind in the last corner, Ricciardo was unable to overtake Rosberg, who won the race with one less stop. Hamilton completed the podium, leaving Räikkönen and Ferrari right out of it. Vettel went up to 5th from the last spot on the grid and Verstappen, Alonso, Pérez, Kvyat and Magnussen completed the top 10. Rosberg is the new championship leader, 8 points ahead of Hamilton.
