Hakkinen hails Singapore as 'amazing'

Hakkinen attended the race as part of his ambassadorial role for Johnnie Walker's Global Responsible Drinking campaign, and was left awe struck by the spectacle, and seeing Fernando Alonso claim his first victory of the year.

"The result was certainly surprising, I did not expect this kind of finish," Hakkinen told autosport.com. "But this was amazing.

"It was the first night race for F1 and you had the maximum lighting system all the way around the track, so automatically in your head you are thinking: 'What can go wrong? What is going to happen?'

"I was asked what could go wrong many times over the weekend and I kept saying, 'hang on a second, let's not talk about the negative things. I am sure that the team of Singapore have done fantastic work to try to eliminate all kinds of problems that can happen here, so let's not talk about the negatives.'

"Now the grand prix is over, we saw an absolutely fascinating grand prix, a fantastic race and everything went fine. So I think we had two grand prix winners - one was Fernando Alonso and the other was Singapore."

Hakkinen, who remains McLaren's last world champion after his successes in 1998 and 1999, spent a lot of time with the Woking-based team over the weekend.

And, after seeing them adopt a conservative approach to the race to guarantee themselves and Lewis Hamilton points, he thinks the outfit have adopted a different mindset - perhaps as the result of the heartbreak of last year's end-of-season slip up.

"In my opinion everything is about learning and you have to learn," said Hakkinen. "If you don't learn, you make the same mistake. Was what we saw in the race (in Singapore) something about the result of last year? I am sure."