Vettel wins Singapore GP to liven up F1 title race

SINGAPORE — Ferrari's Sebastian Vettel won the Singapore Grand Prix on Sunday and runaway championship leader Lewis Hamilton retired mid-race, injecting new life into the fight for the Formula One title.

Vettel led from start to finish in a race that was temporarily interrupted by a fan wandering on the track.

Vettel's third win of the season came by 1.4 seconds over Red Bull driver Daniel Ricciardo.

Ferrari's Kimi Raikkonen was third, as all three finished in the positions they started at the Marina Bay street circuit.

"I was able to look after my tyres and control the pace," Vettel said. "Overall a perfect weekend, I am very, very happy."

Hamilton suffered a power delivery failure that the team took a long time to diagnose and could not fix, forcing him out on lap 33.

His championship lead over Mercedes teammate Nico Rosberg, who finished fourth, was cut from 53 to 41 points — 252 vs 211 — with Vettel a further eight points back on 203. There are six races left.

Williams driver Valterri Bottas was fifth on Sunday, Red Bull's Daniil Kvyat sixth and Force India's Sergio Perez seventh.

Toro Rosso teenager Max Verstappen finished eighth, refusing team orders in the closing laps to move over for teammate Carlos Sainz Jr who was ninth. Sauber's Felipe Nasr passed Romain Grosjean on the penultimate lap for the last points position.

There were two safety-car periods in the race. The first came following a collision between Williams' Felipe Massa, who was coming out of the pits and Force India's Nico Hulkenberg. Race stewards blamed Hulkenberg, and he will get a three-place grid penalty at the next race.

The second came in bizarre circumstances when a fan was seen wandering on the track near the Anderson Bridge section. Vettel shouted over the team radio "there is a man on the track" and the safety car was immediately deployed. The casually-dressed man soon climbed over a trackside barrier and off the track and the race resumed.

Mercedes struggled all weekend for pace as it was not able to get enough grip from the tyres, and then on race day Hamilton suffered his first retirement of the season.

While this race was likely to be only a temporary aberration to Hamilton's otherwise dominant season, Vettel was not giving up hope of challenging for the championship.

"If we have more weekends like this, yes," Vettel said. "All we have to do is look after ourselves, maximum attack. We still have a small chance. Maybe we can make the impossible possible. We will definitely go for it."

The German made a storming start to the race, leading by three seconds after a brilliant opening lap and extending that to 5.3 seconds after only five laps. Ricciardo had whittled that back to 3.6 seconds after 12 laps and the Australian looked likely to close onto the back of his former Red Bull teammate, but then the first safety car emerged.

After that caution period, Vettel adopted a different strategy, driving conservatively as the field closed up behind him. He then suddenly burst away to put two seconds' gap on Ricciardo in the space of one lap. Again, Ricciardo began to erode the margin, only for another safety car period to effectively destroy the Australian's hopes of catching up by exploiting his superior long-stint pace.

"Both safety cars came out at crucial times, but nonetheless his pace was good," Ricciardo said, while quipping that he was so frustrated by the intruding fan ruining his tactical plan that "I was tempted to swerve and clip him".

Hamilton was racing in fourth place and with the potential advantage of having a softer tyre than his rivals in the final stint, when suddenly the car began to lose power.

"I was feeling super optimistic," Hamilton said. "I was on the prime tyres and the three cars in front were on the options but I was easily keeping up with them and thinking 'we have a race on our hands'. They were telling me to change all these things and then I was overtaken by two Manors so I knew l was last. When they started to pull away, I knew it was over."