2018 Singapore GP Review – By Bob Constanduros
I can’t think of many people who would bet against Lewis Hamilton winning the 2018 World Championship now that he has a leading margin of 40 points over Sebastian Vettel. Singapore was another of those races that he wasn’t meant to win, but he did so and did so regally. What happens when he gets to a race where he is favourite?
Many people found the Singapore Grand Prix a bit of a bore and I was surprised at just how much I was able to continue spouting, even though I had my doubts about how exciting it really was. But I watch the gaps and lap times and that’s what keeps me going. Somehow there always seems to be some interest in how those vary and I keep my listeners and viewers informed, rightly or wrongly.
But there were several interesting factors to this Singapore Grand Prix. One, early in the weekend, was Lewis Hamilton facing up to something we in the media have wondered about for years: his lifestyle and therefore preparation for a Grand Prix. Sometimes we’ve conjectured that flying around the world hither and thither is not conducive to good preparation for a sporting event, whether that involves partying, a hobby, training or not.
In Singapore, we were aware that Lewis had been in Shanghai since Monza to launch his Tommy Hilfiger clothing brand. Perhaps we weren’t aware that he’d then been to New York, before flying to Singapore, covering some 25,000 miles. He does that in pretty amazing comfort, let’s admit it, but it’s still time differences, climate changes, different beds etc and most of us would try and avoid that. Sebastian Vettel was probably doing the school run with his kids – ha, you might suggest, considerably more stressful!
But even Lewis realised that if he had issues during and before the Singapore Grand Prix, that the media would pounce on this ‘preparation’ for the event, so it was pretty important that it went well. He need not have worried, of course. It went perfectly.
Well, not quite, as he also admitted. He is very careful to congratulate his team on their hard work, and clearly Mercedes had eked out some extra performance from the car, performance that has been missing since the break and maybe even since Canada. But he did admit that they had got their tyre strategy wrong which hurt their smooth performance.
Teams have to chose their tyre allocation some time prior to a Grand Prix, partially so that Pirelli bring the right amount of tyres to a race. The compounds available for Singapore were soft, ultrasoft and hypersoft – no supersoft – just as they will be next weekend in Russia. Looking at the top teams, Mercedes brought six sets of hypersoft, Red Bull seven sets and Ferrari nine sets.
Now there aren’t really any mysteries in Singapore. The weather is pretty stable at race time, 8pm. It’s usually about 29-30, track temperature about 33 degrees. Last year’s deltas were FP1-Q3, 2.998s; Q1 to Q3, 2.519s. This year, those deltas were 3.696s and 2.138s, perhaps not surprising given that we were using the new hypersoft tyre which hadn’t been used before but it was obviously going to be the tyre to use in qualifying and therefore at the start.
So why had Mercedes only brought six sets of hypersofts? There are three parts of qualifying, two runs each on new tyres, that equals six sets required. So no opportunity to test the hypers on Friday evening or even prior to qualifying in FP3 as usual. Well, Mercedes did use those tyres and therefore they were short, causing Hamilton to try ultras instead. Ferrari even went for ultras for their second stint with Vettel in the race and that didn’t work for them either.
OK, it wasn’t that crucial for Hamilton and he still won, didn’t he? We all thought that qualifying lap was fantastic, but Karun Chandhok did some number crunching and reckoned that Max Verstappen’s qualifying lap was even more sensational. Max was 0.319s behind Hamilton in Q3 with an engine that wasn’t perfect when on the limit – it would stutter out of the pits in the race as well. Karun worked out that Max actually lost more than 0.319s on the straights, due to reduced engine power in comparison to the Mercedes. Max reckoned his qualifying lap was pretty special, and this, perhaps, proves it.
To his great credit, Sebastian Vettel continually refuses to criticise his team in public, in spite of what must be growing frustration. The list of mistakes just gets longer and this time included the slower pit stop in which he was overtaken by Verstappen and the change to ultras rather than softs, with the resulting drop-off in late race performance and the consequent deficit of nearly 40s to his championship rival.
What really stunted this race, however, was the ongoing impossibility for cars to follow one another closely. One of those on the podium – can’t remember which – said that you began to feel the aero effect of the car in front when you were five seconds behind. That’s massive and it affected the front runners when they were lapping slower cars. Lewis says the blue flags looked black in the lights, which can’t have helped.
Of course, in all this confusion, we had several interesting performances from Sergio Perez, Sergey Sirotkin (Abingdon’s most famous Russian) and Romain Grosjean who reverted to blotting his copybook again, just as we thought he was over that. Max Verstappen closed right up on Lewis Hamilton in the traffic, but didn’t think it would be fair to have a go at him!
Whenever I hear the word ‘fair’ uttered in Formula One I’m reminded of an exchange between Ken Tyrrell and Julian Bailey at Hockenheim years ago. Bailey reckoned it would be faster in qualifying to go straight on at the corner coming into the stadium and get a good run into the final corner, which in turn would make him faster across the start/finish line. “So why didn’t you do it,” asked Uncle Ken? “I didn’t think it would be fair,” said Bailey. “Fair? Fair?” roared Ken, “get outside this motorhome and see if you can see anything that’s fair out there!”
To revert to the effect of cars following one another, I wonder if it’s got anything to do with tracks that are hemmed in by concrete walls and debris fencing, rather than wide open circuits like the upcoming Suzuka. I guess we shall see in Russia, next stop. For Vettel, the need to reduce Hamilton’s point lead becomes ever more urgent. And let’s see if Kimi Raikkonen’s motivation to score points for Ferrari remains intact…
Ends
