Formula 1: Mercedes' Lewis Hamilton Races To The Top

The sky was lit up beautifully with fireworks as Mercedes' Lewis Hamilton raced in style to the finish at the Formula 1 Singapore Grand Prix to come up trumps on Sunday. Having won the pole position, he was off to a brilliant start.

Red Bull's Sebastien Vettel and Daniel Ricciardo finished in the second and third places on the podium respectively. Ferrari's Fernando Alonso took the fourth place while Williams' Felipe Massa came fifth.

The safety car was brought out on lap 31 after Force India driver Sergio Perez's front wing blew into fragments following a collision with Adrian Sutil's car. Hamilton lost the lead briefly to Vettel in lap 52 when he had to make a final pit stop so as to change to soft compound tyres. However, with fresh tyres, better speed and DRS, he went past him in lap 54 for his 29^th Grand Prix victory.

On the other hand, Hamilton's teammate Nico Rosberg had a disastrous weekend. He could not start off for the formation lap as there was a faulty loom in his steering column. Even though he did try to race later, he was far behind and had to retire 14 laps later. This is the second time he has retired in the current season. Due to yesterday's result, Hamilton has overcome a 22-point deficit and leads the Driver's Championship now with 241 points. Nico Rosberg is now placed second in the list with 238 points.

In the post-race press conference, Hamilton mentioned the fact that his teammate had to retire from the race. "Of course it would have been a hardcore race if Nico was in the race with me as the car was feeling very good and we would have been very strong," said race-winner Hamilton.

The race finished a lap earlier as the two-hour time limit had been crossed. Apart from Rosberg, McLaren's Jenson Button, Caterham's Kamui Kobayashi and both drivers of Sauber, Adrian Sutil and Esteban Gutierrez could not finish the race.