Why Mercedes had a lucky escape in Singapore

Until the final 15 laps, the Singapore Grand Prix was not a great race. But then, all of a sudden, things started happening and you had to watch all the way to the chequered flag to know the result. Wouldn't it be great if that were the norm as opposed to the exception?

I have to say I was a bit dumbfounded when we heard Nico Robserg's engineer telling him on lap eight that he needed to manage his brakes and it was a very serious issue. Then, to hear the same message to Lewis Hamilton on lap nine really confused me. Why does a team with the advantage they have push the limits so much?

The front brake ducts of an F1 car are critical to its overall aerodynamic performance. Every team looks for the most downforce possible, but on the way you cannot compromise everything else.

As a very rough figure, Mercedes could probably have had 10% more front brake cooling for a loss of 1% overall downforce; that 1% loss would equate to being around 0.1s slower in terms of lap time.

When you consider that they were on pole by over half a second, that 10% extra front brake cooling might have made for a more relaxed race.

Just imagine if Daniel Ricciardo had got the drop on Rosberg at the start and Rosberg had been running in dirty air. The Mercedes' brakes would not have been happy, and that could have handed the race to Red Bull.

We heard Hamilton complaining a lot about his pace, or lack thereof, due to the brake problem and asking his engineer to come up with a strategy miracle. I'm afraid this is not the way it works.

Hamilton does seem to have lost his way since the summer break, and in Singapore he never really looked like getting one over on Rosberg. Yes, he lost some running time during practice, but his and the team's experience should allow them to handle this.

He needs to look deeply at what was causing his lack of pace, otherwise Rosberg will be racking up the points. As we have seen in the past, Lewis doesn't handle that situation very well.

On the topic of strategy, Singapore was all a bit of a blur on that front, with cars in and out of the pits like a McDonald's drivethrough on a busy afternoon. I was surprised how much lap time the undercut was worth, but when the teams realised this they used it to their advantage.

That's what made the last 15 laps of the race very exciting. The three-tyre rule certainly adds another element to the strategy, so being on top of it could win or lose you a race very easily.

Looking forward to 2017 and the new aerodynamic regulations, Red Bull could well be the team to place a little pre-season bet on. Adrian Newey seems to have got his interest back in F1, thanks to the challenge of these new regulations, and Renault looks to have closed the gap to Mercedes and Ferrari.

With the pace of Ricciardo and Max Verstappen, and their willingness to work as a team, and Red Bull able to do something different on strategy, there are not many parts missing from the jigsaw.

For all the success of Mercedes, there are some decisions - such as the one made on brake specification - that you have to wonder about. In a straight fight with Red Bull such a weakness could make the difference between winning and losing.

Talking of Verstappen, the battle with Daniil Kvyat was one I've been looking forward to ever since Kyvat got the boot from Red Bull. It's good the Red Bull management let it unfold between the two drivers and both showed great maturity, which I suppose we should expect.

But it was great to see Verstappen get a little of his own medicine when it came to defensive driving.

Far too often we are seeing a lack of respect for yellow flags from drivers. Something needs to be done or there's going to be a serious incident. It's almost two years since Jules Bianchi's crash, and we don't need a repeat anytime soon.

On top of that, F1 looks amateurish to the public because of the lack of consistency. The electronics exist to nullify this problem, yet still we leave it to the driver to decide what's good enough for each situation.

In Singapore Perez jumped into Q3 at the expense of Valtteri Bottas. One of them respected the yellow flags and the other didn't. While Perez was given an eight-place grid penalty, it still shows the rewards available for taking a risk.

Singapore is a track where it's very difficult for the driver to know what's up ahead, so on this type of circuit respecting the flags is vital.

Perez did the wrong thing in trying to lose the minimum amount of time while showing that he still slowed down, but he is correct to say that the inconsistency in the regulations and the application of these rules led him to do it.

For a driver that's been on the limit around a given section, just slowing down a few per cent feels like walking pace. But is it enough to be safe?

In the short term there are many simple ways of sorting this problem. If a driver is in a double-waved yellow-flag zone, that lap time should be deleted immediately. This will eliminate any need to push the limits.

I know this might just compromise the situation if track conditions are changing dramatically, but these sorts of things usually wash out over the season.

As for the marshal who was on the track during the race trying to beat Usain Bolt's 100-metre world record before Nico Rosberg arrived, this just shouldn't happen and it needs to be looked into very seriously as the consequences could be catastrophic.

We have seen several similar incidents in recent years and it can't keep happening because eventually something will go wrong.

That doesn't necessarily mean the individual marshal was at fault, and it sounds like he was instructed to do what he did, but the procedures clearly need to be looked at to prevent a repeat.

In Q3, the pitlane was like Hyde Park Corner on a Friday afternoon. We heard Verstappen complaining about his outlap being compromised and making the correct tyre preparation impossible.

So why not wait and go out about 20s - or whatever your outlap time is plus a few seconds - before the first car comes round after its warm-up lap? That way, you are on the clearest possible track.

Kimi Raikkonen did this on both of his Q3 runs, so at least Ferrari is doing the right thing some of the time.

We also saw drivers setting out their strategy on a Saturday afternoon by using different tyres during Q2. Both Ricciardo and Verstappen used super-softs, rather than ultra-softs, so started the race on those tyres.

Because this is happening more often, it's even more important to put on screen what tyre the driver has set their lap time on. This would give the viewer so much more understanding of what's happening, so I can't understand why it's not done.

The information is all there, so in effect it's just the display software that needs a mod. There's so much more that can be done in terms of giving the viewer what they need.

Perhaps that's something Liberty Media should be thinking about.