Sunday: Mercedes and Hamilton win in Singapore, Rosberg retires

Lewis Hamilton (#44) – Victory

Seventh victory of the season for the new championship leader who made a double success after Nico Rosberg’s retirement early in the race, even though the appearance of the safety car didn’t help the Briton: « It would have been a difficult race if Nico had been at the front, because we clearly had the pace. It was going pretty smoothly until the safety car, which gave me some issues. I pushed hard to widen the gap but then the tires started to degrade and I wasn’t sure what to do: keep pushing or slow down to preserve them. So we quickly pitted and I came out behind Seb. But I knew they were on a two-stop strategy and that his tires were worn. I passed him on the back straight: the gap was very small and maybe I could have chosen another place on the track. But, I quickly got past. »

« Obviously, it’s not an ideal result with Nico’s retirement, so it shows that we must continue to work to stay on top of reliability, » he concluded.

Nico Rosberg (No. 6) – Abandon (electronic issue)

From the grid setup lap, problems befell the Mercedes No. 6 and it couldn’t start during the formation lap: « The problems with my steering wheel started in the garage even before the race began, and it was difficult when I couldn’t leave the grid – the car couldn’t get out of neutral. When I left the pit lane, I could only change gears: there was no radio, no DRS, and reduced hybrid power. We hoped that the systems could reboot, like the radio did, and that we could change the situation. But after we swapped the steering wheel once more, we had to retire. »

Bad operation for the German who couldn’t fight, leaving the victory and the championship lead to his teammate: « It was a tough day for me and unfortunately, another reliability issue for the team. At least it was good for the team that Lewis was able to win. Now, we need to analyze what happened and optimize everything even more because reliability is our problem this season. »