Super Seb's Singapore Sling

Super Seb's Singapore Sling

Formula One's annual night race at the spectacular Singapore today provided Sebastian Vettel with his first opportunity to put the championship beyond the reach of his rivals and the chance to become the youngest double world champion in the sport's history. He started the race in his customary pole position with his team mate second and the McLarens and Ferraris lined up two by two behind.

At the start, Vettel had a flyer while his team mate struggled away from the line again and had to defend frantically against Hamilton – Button had already passed Webber at the start. Hamilton, having made a great start to challenge Webber, had to yield into the first corner, which ended up costing him four places as both the Mercedes and the Ferraris squeezed by.

Vettel had no such issues, leading by over two seconds at the end of the first lap and by nearly six seconds at the end of the fifth. Hamilton once again found himself staring at the back of Michael Schumacher's Mercedes, but this time was able to pass him within a lap rather than the 27 it took him at Monza. He made short work of Rosberg as well, passing him on the following lap. The Mercedes cars were not quite as potent here as they have been recently.

The next action came from Alonso and Webber. Alonso was struggling to keep his tyres in good condition and Webber seized the opportunity and bullied his way by. Alonso pitted immediately to try and use the undercut of his new tyres to get the position back – it worked brilliantly with Webber once again bottled up behind Alonso after he pitted. Hamilton provided the next piece of drama when he attempted to overtake Massa and once again didn't quite give himself enough room, swiping and puncturing the right rear wheel of Massa and losing his front wing in the process. After pitting to change his front wing, he found himself travelling down the pitlane again just a couple of laps later having been given a drive-through penalty for his incident with Massa.

Through all this action, Di Resta, aided by not stopping, quietly progressed to third place on lap 19. It didn't last, with Alonso finding a way through with relative ease, but it had been an impressive drive nonetheless up to that point and he found himself in sixth at the finish – his best result to date.

Hamilton found himself in fifteenth place on lap twenty and began his fightback through the field with a surprisingly clean pass on Kobayashi. Given the incidents in this race's four year period on the calendar, it was perhaps surprising that there had been no safety car within the first third of the race. It eventually came just before half distance when Schumacher attempted to pass Perez after he became involved in a squabble with Rosberg who had run wide onto the marbles. Schumacher closed rapidly onto the back of the Sauber and seemed to misjudge how close he was, launching himself up into the air as his front wheel made contact with the rear of Perez. He found himself heading straight to the barrier in a spectacular though not terribly heavy shunt.

The leaders took the opportunity to pit while the safety car was out. At the restart, Vettel ran away and hid whilst Button attempted to pick his way through the back markers between himself and Vettel. Alonso lost a position into the notorious turn ten chicane to Mark Webber who once again made Alonso look like a pussy cat, much like he did at Spa.

The race settled down a few laps after the restart – Hamilton picked his way through to fifth place and set about trying to catch Alonso, which was never going to be an easy task. The race at the front seemed set to fall into a 'who blinks first' pattern. Each of the leaders looked set to try and make the finish without another pit stop. Webber started to close up on Button a little, but Button responded and maintained the gap to him. Vettel, now 13 seconds in front didn't seem to have any trouble maintaining his pace and pulling out a gap every so often just to keep them all on their toes. The first man to pit was Webber, closely followed by Button and then Vettel – each of them pitted within a lap or two of each other. Button decided this was the time to push and try to pressure Vettel into a mistake. For a while, Button looked like he might just pull a miracle out of his box of tricks, setting fastest lap after fastest lap, while Vettel struggled through the traffic. Button unfortunately eventually ran out of laps, crossing the line just under two seconds behind Vettel.

Vettel didn't quite wrap up the championship this week, he needs just one more point to put it out of reach. The only man who can stop him now is Button and he'd need to win every single race and have Sebastian fail to finish each of them. Strange things happen in this sport fairly frequently but I suspect Vettel won't be losing too much sleep over it.

Stuart McCann is from IntentsGP.com:  Silverstone 2012 Camping is now on sale!

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