Team-Mate Wars: Singapore

In F1, the first person you have to beat is your team-mate. Andrew Davies’ Team-Mate Wars returns.

Star of the Race: Sebastian Vettel

Overtaking Move of the Race: Lap 54: Max Verstappen on Fernando Alonso at Turn 7

Mercedes Race: Rosberg Season: Lewis Hamilton 8 – Nico Rosberg  7 Lewis Hamilton has a problem on his hands. Nico Rosberg is becoming fireproof. In the past he could rely on the odd mistake under pressure from his team-mate, but not anymore. The Singapore GP was the ultimate test of Rosberg’s nerve and he kept it. Although race commentators were wishing an extra lap for the race so that Daniel Ricciardo could have a go at overtaking him, it was more likely that Rosberg had measured out his brake cooling to the most accurate degree. In fact it was Hamilton who almost threw away a podium place by getting his braking wrong and allowing Raikkonen to make the edgiest of passes.

Ferrari Race: Raikkonen Season: Vettel  9 – Raikkonen 6 Tough to judge team-mate performance when one suffers a mechanical fault at the start of qualifying, but the rear suspension failure that Sebastian Vettel suffered on the Saturday could well have been contributed to by Seb hammering his Ferrari over the kerbs.

Raikkonen had a good race but was ultimately let down by a strategy call from the pitwall. Although Rosberg stayed out and lost over two seconds a lap to the Red Bull in the closing stages, Nico’s radio messages to his team indicated that it was the brakes not the tyres holding him back. It’s likely that Raikkonen could have maintained much better pace that the Mercedes in the closing stages, but leisurely hindsight is a wonderful thing.

Had Lewis been delayed by two-tenths on his  undercut lap after his final pit-stop, then the Ferrari call would have been seen as masterful. And then a third place and a fifth place would have seemed a great return from fifth and twenty-second on the grid.

Red Bull Race: Ricciardo Season: Ricciardo 7 – Verstappen 4 Dan had the measure of Max in qualifying and pushed hard at the end of the race to get a victory that might have been possible with the 2014 Rosberg, but not the post-Spa  2016 Rosberg. He closed in waiting for a mistake that never happened. The podium interviewer (in this case Jeremy Hardy soundalike Martin Brundle) would have been fearing a Ricciardo win and the prospect of champagne offered from both left and right shoes.

Max’s start was bad, but not Gutierrez-bad, and not all his own work (see below). He made up for it with the usual bunch of inspired overtakes – the one on Alonso crowning it all off. Fernando is the master of keeping people behind him, and Verstappen’s move was as clinical and neat as anything Sharon Osbourne has had done.

Williams Race: Massa Season:  Bottas 10 – …

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