Bob Barnard Track Engineering

Well the race has been run and won without further issues with the kerbs, although some were just left out and replaced by paint. The Turn Ten chicane, the "Singapore Sling" as it has been dubbed lived up to expectations and "slung" Kobayashi into the wall yesterday. This is the wrong solution to this corner and just results in a one line race track with the potential for cars to fly and lose control. The only passing move I've seen into it was Webber at the restart who jumped Alonso as he did in Spa.

Vettel predictably won the race going away from the start while Mark had his usual bad start which compromised Hamilton's who then had the now usual difficult race not helped by the lack of the patience he showed behind Schumacher at Monza. We saw a lot of passing for a change, but mostly by faster cars out of position getting past slow ones, but at least the DRS avoided the problems we saw at Abu Dhabi last year. The Stewards continue to issue inconsistent penalties. Rosberg misses turn 2 at the start and is not penalised, and then shoves Perez off there later in the race, improves his position and again no penalty. Now when Alonso was pushed to miss the chicane at Silverstone last year, or Hamilton at Spa a couple of years ago they get told to give back the spot. Schumacher drives straight over the back of Perez and gets a "reprimand" after the race. I guess he could hardly do a drive through.   

Renault had a terrible event, beaten by a Lotus on merit, so Tony Fernandes was happy and is apparently closing in on approval to change his team name to Caterham.

Button continues to show he is becoming, (has become?), the McLaren team leader with another great drive, while Ferrari is still around but not quite there as they have been all year. Aside from Red Bull Force India are probably the happiest with their results in Singapore.

In other news the teams are saying they are not happy with some of next year's calendar and were not asked to approve it, the "loophole" that tripped up the Bahrain changes this year, but this time Todt says it is a matter between FOTA and Bernie, and Bernie just says they are lucky to have somewhere to race. That's what I call negotiation.