Under The Lights At Marina Bay - The 2012 Singapore Grand Prix

Under the brighter-then-day-light race held at the Marina Bay Street Circuit, the 2012 Singapore Grad Prix was littered with lengthy safety car interruptions, allowing for only 59 of the scheduled 61 laps, before the two-hour race time limit expired

Pole winner Lewis Hamilton had to retire early from the lead before the halfway point with a gearbox failure, allowing the race to fall into the hands of Sebastian Vette, who won the Singapore Grand Prix for a second year in a row.

Not all was lost for McLaren as Jenson Button salvaged second place while Fernando Alonso achieved his target of finishing on the podium.

According to f1fanatic, "Hamilton had been on the radio to complain about problems with the up-shift on his McLaren and on lap 23 it stopped changing gears entirely.

He repeatedly pulled on his right-hand gear lever then thumped the steering wheel in frustration as he coasted to a stop in the turn five run-off. In five races he’s had two wins and three no-scores, the latter down to a puncture, a first-lap collision, and now a gearbox problem.

Martin Whitmarsh added that the problem had only become apparent during the race and discounted the possibility of the problem having been caused by Hamilton’s contact with the wall during qualifying."

Sebastian Vettel moves into the second spot in the Drivers’ Championship with his second win of the season. He is now just 29 points behind of Ferrari driver Fernando Alonso’s lead. Kimi Räikkönen remains in third with 149 points.

In the Constructors’ Championship, Red Bull Racing is still the clear-cut leader with 297 points, McLaren follows in second with 261 points, and Ferrari rounds out hird place with 245 points.

Looking forward to Japan, Michael Schumacher will be docked ten places on the grid for the Japanese Grand Prix. He was given the penalty for his collision with Jean-Eric Vergne which took both drivers out of the race, fortunately neither driver was injured.

 

I hate Vettel's finger a lot. Nice race thought, a pure espectacle. Alonso needs to finish in a better possition than Vettel in Suzuka for being more "relaxed".

 

Hamiltons bad luck is reaching epic proportions

 

Four races with 0 points. That's really bad. Reliability is very important this season, and that's what Ferrari has and the other teams need, reliability.

 

Epic is right.

 

I throw a lot of crap at loldonado but this go around, until his hydraulics failure, he was driving a great race and fending off Alo very intelligently.

I also think it's time for Schumacher to hang it up but stay on the team in a different capacity than an F1 driver, his reflexes are just not there...here's him and vergne meeting up:

crashed out in carelessness and error last year here in s'pore too when trying to overtake then not w/ Perez lol. And let's not forget him rear ending Senna in Barcelona in a similar fashion earlier on this year.

 

Seriously....it was as if schumy's mind was elsewhere. But it is possible he was coming in to fast and/or had a brake issue? But then again I am probably just giving the former champ the benefit of the doubt out of respect. ;-)

 

There is alot of points left so Alonso needs to be in the front otherwise Vettel will catch right up.