Formula 1: Ferrari's limp prancing horse and poorly executed strategy lets Lewis Hamilton extend Championship lead

The biggest challenge that Lewis Hamilton faced as he dominated the Singapore Grand Prix came from Romain Grosjean and Sergey Sirotkin, though Max Verstappen and Sebastian Vettel were the men who actually chased his Mercedes home. Well, the Red Bull driver did. In Vettel’s case his prancing horse was limping for much of the way after Ferrari had made a catastrophic error of tyre choice which saw him finish 40 seconds adrift as his title opponent opened his lead to 40 points with six races left.

Hamilton had this one covered right front the start, as Verstappen got inside Vettel going into the first corner only for the Ferrari’s superior acceleration to take the German into second place on the exit to Turn Three.

But further back, Sergio Perez’s uncharacteristically wild race began when he shoved Force India team-mate Esteban Ocon into the wall there, triggering a safety car deployment.

Hamilton handled the restart with the same aplomb and soon established a small lead, though the opening stint was merely a slo-mo prologue as the leaders sought to maximise the distance they could go on their very soft-compound Pirelli hypersoft tyres.

Vettel was the first to blink, pitting on the 14th lap, and that was where Ferrari blundered, putting him on a set of the slightly harder ultrasofts.

Mercedes brought Hamilton in a lap later and put him on the most durable soft rubber, and team-mate Valtteri Bottas a lap later still. Red Bull pitted Verstappen on the 17th and he took the same rubber.

After Kimi Raikonnen and Daniel Riccardo had spells in the lead, from 18 to 21 and 22 to 26 respectively, Hamilton resumed command as they too pitted (Raikonen for softs, Ricciardo for ultrasofts).

Thereafter, it was quickly clear that only Verstappen could offer a challenge as the world champion headed for his 69th success. Vettel reported as early as the 18th lap that his ultrasofts weren’t going to get to the finish, and he was history as far as the top two positions were concerned.

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Hamilton had control, but things nearly slipped from his grasp on the 37th lap. That was when the selfish intransigence of Grosjean and Sirotkin nearly cost him the race. The two were being lapped by his Mercedes but were so intent on their own battle for a minor placing that each ignored at least 11 blue flags. From 3.3s on the 36th lap Hamilton’s lead had been slashed to 1.9s by the 37th, and Verstappen actually peeked to the left of Hamilton as he finally started to clear Sirotkin’s outclassed Williams.

For unknown reasons, Sirotkin did not get penalised for his part in this farce, though he later did for nearly putting Brendon Hartley’s Toro Rosso in the wall. But Grosjean had five seconds added to his race time. A race ban might have been more effective in reminding a veteran who should know better what track manners are.

“I was unlucky with traffic and those guys were moving around so much,” Hamilton said. “It was difficult to follow them because already you could feel their draft when you were five or six seconds behind them, and the car started sliding more. Max was a bit luckier when they wouldn’t let me by, and jeez, it was close. At one stage my heart was in my mouth.

“Even then they were not lifting off when I was beside them. The hairs on my neck were standing up for a bit, then it was back to racing.”

But he sportingly offered a bit more insight than either Grosjean or Sirotkin deserved (or their teams who should have been keeping them informed) when he said of the problem drivers faced: “The blue flags were very dark blue and in a small hole out there, but even when the light panels came on some drivers were not responding.”

Once past the Williams and the Haas he quickly resumed his rhythm and though the gap between him and Verstappen ebbed and flowed as they lapped other, less selfish drivers, there was never any doubt who would win.

“Red Bull and Ferrari in the last few years have been right up there here, so we knew they’d be attacking here and that it would take something quite special to leapfrog them,” Hamilton said. “I don’t think even some of the top guys - Toto [Wolff], James Allison or James Vowles - thought that was possible, so it was great to see their happiness yesterday. It was great to see that their excitement was still like the first time, even after six years. That was inspirational for me.

“We definitely didn’t come to Singapore expecting to come away with 10 points more.”

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Verstappen had had problems again with his Renault engine going into false neutral behind the safety car, and it bogged down again as he left the pits after his stop, but he still had just enough momentum to get back out inches ahead of Vettel, and that was crucial as he sped on to a solid result.

“I made a good start but from the first lap you could see we lacked top speed,” he said. “But the team had a great strategy and we got the overcut and back into second, but in the end we knew second was our best result so I just brought it home. You can’t pass here. It’s impossible. You can’t get close, and you are just following a train, so you do your own race.”

Vettel’s luck held, despite the gap between him and Verstappen ballooning as his tyres died in the last 15 laps.

“Lewis said he didn’t come expecting to gain 10 points, and we didn’t come expecting to lose 10,” Vettel said. “But we weren’t in the fight. Overall the speed is there, but today we were a bit slower and we need to understand why. I was happy to try being aggressive to win, and go with the ultrasoft tyres at my stop so we could get ahead and get track position, but clearly the others did some things better than us. It was overall not the result we wanted, and a disappointment after we came here thinking we were going to be very strong. But it’s history, and now we need to look forward.”

Behind him, Bottas was struggling with problems on his Mercedes and could not thus attack the stricken red car, and also had his mirrors full of Raikkonen and Ricciardo. The gaps between them also increased and decreased in traffic, but as Vettel finished a humbling 39.9s behind Hamilton, Bottas was still 11.9s behind him and just a second ahead of Raikkonen, who was nine-tenths ahead of the second Red Bull. Marina Bay might be Monaco on steroids, as Hamilton quipped after his sensational pole, but overtaking is just as hard here.

The other outstanding drive came as Fernando Alonso brought his McLaren-Renault into an unlapped seventh place, while before he became a villain Sitorkin had been a hero keeping his Williams ahead of Perez’s Force India. The Mexican later squeezed alongside but then moved left into the Russian for the second accident of his race, which earned him a drive-through penalty and completed a woeful day for the newly revived team which ought to have scored decent points.