Alonso ends hoodoo in sundown Singapore

By Jan Lin. Photos by Vanessa Lim.

Marina Bay Street Circuit, September 29, 2008 – After 1 hour 57 minutes and 16.304 seconds, Renault's Fernando Alonso miraculously ended his 12-month title drought in Singapore and bequeathed Renault the Constructor’s trophy after an agonising two-year wait. Nico Rosberg (Williams-Toyota) and Lewis Hamilton (McLaren-Mercedes) shared the podium after finishing second and third respectively.

“Unlucky yesterday, but very lucky today,” were the first words of the two-time winner of the World Drivers' Championship after picking up his first chequered flag of the season in Singapore. After a disastrous qualifying session on Saturday, where a fuel problem forced him to retire before he could claim a decent starting position, Alonso had declared that he would need a “miracle” to mount the historic podium.

Alonso's miracle came through last night and ‘luck’ will be remembered as the secret weapon needed to cross the finish line first at the inaugural night race. To have started the race at a humble 15th position on the grid where he could barely see the car in pole position, it required a tremendous amount of self-belief for any driver to succeed in meandering through the pack of equally aggressive monsters for 61 laps.

“We chose a very aggressive strategy and we had a bit of luck, but we had the pace and the car was fantastic throughout the weekend,” Alonso revealed at the post-race press conference. “Winning a grand prix here just seemed to be impossible because we missed our chance yesterday in qualifying, but we were very fortunate today and it's a superb result for the team.”

It was a deception, or some say ‘mind games’, for the drivers to have unanimously declared prior to the race that it was impossible to overtake in the Marina Bay Street Circuit. Shortly into the race, the Renault ace was already weaving his way through the pack before receiving his gift from heaven in the form of a safety car that ‘descended’ after his team mate Nelson Piquet Jr crashed on Lap 15.

Piquet's dramatic crash happened by the Bay Grandstand on turn 17, and spectator eyes widened further to see the 23-year-old Brazilian rise from the wreckage unassisted and then recklessly dash across the track to return to his Renault crew. The deployment of the safety car for this accident meant the pit lane was immediately closed at a critical time when many cars needed to refuel.

Alonso had (fortunately) opted for an early first pit stop at the end of Lap 12, so unlike the rest of the herd, he was unaffected by the untimely closure of the pit lane and instead, gained a massive advantage when the rest pitted on the reopening of the pit lane. Not only was there a furious traffic jam at the pit lane, a catastrophic catalog of errors at the Ferrari pit stop further boosted the Alonso miracle.

Using an ‘advanced’ pit stop system, the Ferrari team has done away with the conventional ‘lollipop man’, who would signal to the driver using the ‘lollipop signage’ when the crew has completed their job with the car. Relying on automatic signals instead, race leader Felipe Massa was victimized by a combination of human and technology error, as he drove off on a green signal with the monstrous fuel hose still attached to his car.

Massa pulled over just before exiting the pit lane and could only haplessly wait for his crew to race down the pit lane to release the fuel hose that resembled a gigantic silver cobra. Massa was consequently penalized with a pit lane drive-through for the unsafe release at the pit stop, which had altogether damaged his podium chances. The Brazilian eventually finished in 13th place while team mate Kimi Raikkonen was placed last.

Misfortune struck the 2007 World Drivers' champion Raikkonen when he lost control of his car at the chicane of the notorious turn 10 and crashed with only four laps remaining in the race. “I was trying to attack Glock in case he might make a mistake,” explained the Finnish, “but I went slightly wide at the chicane, jumping over the kerb and when the car landed, I lost control and ended up in the barriers.”

On top of the Ferrari team's amateurish error with Massa's car at the pit stop, Raikkonen's mistake also proved costly for Ferrari in the constructors race. Ferrari have lost the lead at the top of the constructors standing to McLaren-Mercedes after last night’s results. Hamilton's third place finish secured six points for his team, which was sufficient to overtake the empty-handed Ferrari team by just 1 point.

Raikkonen confessed that he was “unhappy” to have jeopardized his team's construction standing but stressed that he is not yet ready to accept defeat. “Clearly, morale is not high today,” he reflected, “but I am not used to giving up and will do my very best to try and help the team reach its targets.” Felipe Massa echoed the same sentiments saying, “We mustn’t give up and I’m sure we won’t.”

With the defeat in Singapore, Massa now sits seven points behind Hamilton on the Drivers' standing. Massa remarked, “It’s hard to deal with losing in this fashion a race that was within our grasp, with a car that was just the way I wanted it. We had a good strategy and all the signs were there that we could get a one-two finish. But things can change in a moment and that’s what happened today.”

The talking point of the first ever night race in Singapore will definitely be on the pit stop incident that had played a massive role in Massa's defeat, but the Ferrari driver was not willing to harp on what would have been if the incident didn’t occur. “At the pit stop, one of the guys made a mistake,” Massa recounted, “but we are only human. Each one of us always tries to do our best and these things can happen.”

The winning team of the night - Renault - broke a two-year jinx to mount the podium in the Lion City. Collecting the full 10 points last night, Renault's victory also meant that five different teams have since mounted the podium this season, a unique scenario in recent years. The 2007 season had in fact only two teams – Ferrari and McLaren - splitting the 17 championship victories.

1985 was the last time where five teams won at least one championship each. Diversifying the 2008 Championship season with the inclusion of more street circuits and night racing has diversified the podium winners too. So taking away the novelty of a night time race, the enigmatic street circuit of the Singapore Grand Prix will be the crowd puller when the race returns to Marina Bay next year.

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