Formula 1: Winners and losers from the 2018 Singapore Grand Prix

Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport’s Lewis Hamilton was dominant in the 15th race of the 2018 Formula 1 season at Marina Bay Street Circuit.

Formula 1 traveled to the narrow Marina Bay Street Circuit in the city of Marina Bay, Singapore, where Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport’s Lewis Hamilton laid down a dominant performance on his way to extending his championship points lead.

The 2018 Singapore Grand Prix featured Lewis Hamilton setting an absolutely blistering qualifying time of 1:36.015 in the third and final qualifying session to claim the pole position for the race. Hamilton went on to lead 49 laps of the 61-lap race and further extend his points lead over Scuderia Ferrari driver Sebastian Vettel.

Here are the winners and losers from the 2018 Singapore Grand Prix

Winners

Lewis Hamilton…again

Lewis Hamilton has the pace and consistency at the right time to make the push for his fifth Formula 1 driver championship. He now has 281 points, 40 points of Sebastian Vettel, who has 241 points after finishing the Singapore Grand Prix in third place. Mercedes have been dead on as far as calling smart pit and tire strategies, which has caused Hamilton to be able to compete for and earn wins on numerous occasions in recent races.

Max Verstappen

Hats off to Max Verstappen, who was able to pierce the nearly undeniable commonality that the top qualifying and finishing cars must be silver or red in color. The Aston Martin Red Bull Racing driver surprised in qualifying by beating out both Ferrari drivers and planting his Red Bull in second place.

When the race began, Verstappen was willing to fight with Vettel over second place, which Vettel eventually took from him. It was when Vettel attempted an undercut that caused Verstappen to come out of the pits directly in front of Vettel. The two drivers scrapped again for second and Verstappen managed to secure it.

Losers

Racing Point Force India

In the racing rulebook, the first and obvious note is that a driver is not supposed to crash into things that tend to damage cars. Directly under that rule and in bold is the rule: Do not crash into your teammate!

Teammates Esteban Ocon and Sergio Perez previously made waves when driving for Sahara Force India by making contact with each other so many times that they were given orders to purposely keep away from each other when on the track.

In the 2018 Formula 1 season, this trend had seemed to be a thing of the past. But in the Singapore Grand Prix, Perez pinched Ocon into the wall, which damaged Ocon’s car to the point where he was forced to retire on the first lap. Karma went hunting for Perez, who made more contact with Sergey Sirotkin’s car, causing a puncture to one of the tires on Perez’s car.

Haas

Haas have seen a significant downturn in results in the second half of the Formula 1 season. They are in a massive brawl in the mid-pack for the title of “best of the rest”, but experiencing a second consecutive race during which they scored no points is unsustainable if their goal is to beat Renault Sport for fourth place in the constructor standings.