Vettel Wins After Hamilton Retires In Singapore

Red Bull’s Sebastian Vettel jumped into stronger contention for the world championship after scoring a comfortable victory in Singapore over McLaren’s Jenson Button and Ferrari’s Fernando Alonso in Singapore. 

Though McLaren's Lewis Hamilton led from the start, after a series of frantic radio messages to his team he retired with a gearbox problem and handed the lead to Vettel.
The 2012 Singapore Grand Prix was drawn out to the full two hour race limit, cutting off the final two laps, mainly due to safety car deployments.

The first safety car was deployed on the 33rd lap when Narain Karthikeyan tapped a wall in his HRT, making a clumsy mistake at turn 18 and parked his car in the stadium tunnel. There was a lengthy delay while his car was retrieved.

At the head of the restart, Jenson Button came frighteningly close to Vettel's rear as the Red Bull driver appeared to bolt at the end of the lap but then slowed up. The McLaren managed to avoid contact, resuming the race in second but Button made his feelings known over the radio. *The incident was investigated after the race but no action was taken.

No sooner had racing resumed on the 39th lap then Mercedes’ Michael Schumacher rammed the back of the 10th-placed Toro Rosso of Jean-Eric Vergne, resulting in retirement for both and a second safety-car deployment.
*Schumacher was subsequently handed a 10-place grid penalty for the next round in Japan for causing the collision.

But by far, the best result of the race would be Marussia's Timo Glock. The German elated Marussia with this massively-important 12th place finish (the team's best F1 result to date) which has big implications in their fight with Caterham and HRT. Especially as he had been fortunate to escape damage after colliding into a wall earlier on.

Sebastian Vettel dedicated his victory in Singapore to the late Professor Sid Watkins who passed away on the 12th of September and for whom there was a minute’s silence on the grid prior to the start.

Sebastian Vettel	Winner   Fan's Choice
Jenson Button	Second
Fernando Alonso	Third
Paul di Resta	P4
Nico Rosberg	P5
Kimi Räikkönen	P6
Romain Grosjean	P7
Felipe Massa	P8
Daniel Ricciardo	P9
Sergio Pérez	P10
Mark Webber	P11
Timo Glock	P12
Kamui Kobayashi	P13
Nico Hülkenberg	P14
Heikki Kovalainen	P15
Charles Pic	P16
Pedro de la Rosa	P17
Bruno Senna	P18
Vitaly Petrov	P19
Michael Schumacher	Retired (Spin)
Jean-Éric Vergne	Retired (Brakes)
Pastor Maldonado	Retired (hydraulics)
Narain Karthikeyan	Retired (spin)
Lewis Hamilton	Retired (gearbox)