Nico Rosberg won the Singapore Grand Prix but had to sweat it out during the closing stages of the race as Red Bull’s Daniel Ricciardo made supreme effort to close in on a potential victory. Had the 61 lap race lasted one more lap Ricciardo, who was on a fresher set of tyres, could have taken victory. Hamilton laboured his way to third, however both Mercedes drivers were nursing brake issues from a few laps into the race which affected their pace throughout. Rosberg ended the weeked as he had begun it, at the top and looked un-flustered in comparison to his team mate Lewis Hamilton who looked unstettled from the word go. At the start of the race, and with just a few corners gone, Nico Hulkenburg crashed into the pitwall which immediately brought the safety car out.   After two laps the safety car period was over, surprising some but not Rosberg who resumed the race lead and maintaining an easy advantage over what would end up being his only challenger that day, Ricciardo.   Both Rosberg and Hamilton were sent a message over the radio by their respective engineers that their brakes were beginning to overheat. This meant both Mercedes drivers had to effectively slow down to cool the brakes. Despite this issue Rosberg was able to maintain his advantage over Ricciardo but Hamilton was not able to challenge Ricciardo. Indeed Hamilton’s brake issues allowed the Ferrari of Kimi Raikkonen to sneak past into a podium position on lap 33. With crucial championship points at stake in what could be a key moment in the championship it looked like Hamilton would drop more points. By lap 45 Hamilton was back into third position as he managed to undercut the Ferrari by switching to a third set of tyres. By now Rosberg was just over 25 seconds in the lead, and with 48 laps of 61 gone it seemed like a simple cruise to victory. But those brake issues would mean otherwise. By lap 49 Ricciardo, on a fresher set of tyres, sliced 4 seconds out of Rosberg’s lead, and the Red Bull driver wasn’t satisfied enough as he continued to close the gap to himself and Rosberg at a rapid rate of knots. It was too late for Rosberg to pit in order to fend of the Red Bull because doing so meant that he would lose the lead so the team decided it was better to stay put and wait until Ricciardo had exhausted the life out of his tyres. But Rosberg held on, his brakes held on and his tyres nearly held on to clinch victory by what ended up being a very close margin. Hamilton secured third place but this was yet another damage limitation drive for Hamilton who had technical issues from First Practice on. Rosberg now leads Hamilton by 8 points, with 6 races remaining it seems the championship lead is changing hands every weekend, but whose hands lifts the world drivers trophy is anyones guess at the moment. 2016 Sinagpore Grand Prix Results:

Pos	No	Driver	Laps	Time/Retired	Pts
1	6	Rosberg	61	1:55:48.950	25
2	3	Ricciardo	61	+0.488s	18
3	44	Hamilton	61	+8.038s	15
4	7	Räikkönen	61	+10.219s	12
5	5	Vettel	61	+27.694s	10
6	33	Verstappen	61	+71.197s	8
7	14	Alonso	61	+89.198s	6
8	11	Perez	61	+111.062s	4
9	26	Kvyat	61	+111.557s	2
10	20	Magnussen	61	+119.952s	1
11	21	Gutierrez	60	+1 lap	0
12	19	Massa	60	+1 lap	0
13	12	Nasr	60	+1 lap	0
14	55	Sainz	60	+1 lap	0
15	30	Palmer	60	+1 lap	0
16	94	Wehrlein	60	+1 lap	0
17	9	Ericsson	60	+1 lap	0
18	31	Ocon	59	+2 laps	0
NC	22	Button	43	DNF	0
NC	77	Bottas	35	DNF	0
NC	27	Hulkenberg	0	DNF	0
NC	8	Grosjean	0	DNS