How Vettel and Ferrari can salvage their season

We all thought Bernie Ecclestone's sprinkler system suggestion of six years ago wasn't a feasible idea, but the Singapore Grand Prix showed just what a little rain shower can do to spice up a Formula 1 race.

It also proved the wisdom of the old saying that you can't win a race at the first corner, but you can certainly lose it. Ferrari took that to an extreme, losing it even before the first corner.

I know overtaking is nigh-on impossible with the current breed of F1 car around a circuit like Marina Bay and that in wet conditions the safest place to be is up front, but sometimes you need to prioritise survival in order to challenge later in the day.

By the time Lewis Hamilton got to Turn 3, he would have been laughing his head off at the antics of the red cars. I bet he thought all of his Christmases had come at once - especially having said he needed a "miracle" to limit the damage to his world championship hopes after qualifying.

Once the accident had happened, he just had to get his head down and keep the car out of the barriers until the chequered flag. It was no easy task, but as we've seen in the past he doesn't get fazed by wet and changeable conditions. It must have been hard for Sebastian Vettel to watch, knowing how big an opportunity he had wasted.

We've seen Vettel get a bit headstrong before, such as under the safety car in Baku when he swiped Hamilton's Mercedes. On Sunday, it happened again - and in doing so he could just have thrown away not only the drivers' championship, but more importantly the support of many Italian fans.

I would have thought he could have better assessed the situation. Knowing Max Verstappen was the guy beside him and that he is not one of those drivers who gives up easily going into Turn 1, Vettel should have allowed a bit more space. Instead, he shut the door and with Kimi Raikkonen on the other side of Verstappen, the accident was inevitable.

It certainly wasn't Raikkonen's fault. He was simply taking advantage of the slow-ish starts of both Vettel and Verstappen. When Verstappen had to edge left and back off slightly to stop hitting Vettel, Raikkonen caught his right-rear on the left-front of the Red Bull.

Sometimes you need to prioritise survival in order to challenge later in the day

The resulting spin speared him into Vettel's Ferrari, damaging the sidepod and radiator and leading to Vettel spinning out of the lead on his own fluids.

The worrying thing for me was that the nose of Vettel's car was wiped off at its fixings when he side-swiped the wall. If for any reason he had spun around and gone into the wall on the other side of the road head on, he could very easily not be walking around today because the nose contains crash structures. That needs a close inspection and immediate rectification.

It was also sad to see Fernando Alonso get caught up in this. He was an innocent bystander with nowhere to go, at a track where the McLaren-Honda package might just have been on for a strong result.

This is all ifs, buts and maybes but had Vettel gone into survival mode and accepted relinquishing the lead to Verstappen, he would probably be at least 18 points better off. Hamilton would probably have finished behind him, but the Mercedes driver is a rocket shop in these conditions. The way he showed who was boss in the race that did happen suggests that even if he hadn't been gifted the lead by the crash, perhaps he might have won it anyway?

After such a big blow, how do Ferrari and Vettel get their heads above water again?

The reality of it is that Ferrari now has nothing to lose, because losing was something it did so emphatically in Singapore.

So the development of the car must be pushed to the maximum, Vettel and Raikkonen must drive like never before and now should be aggressive in race starts and hope that they get away with it. The kind of advantage Ferrari had in Singapore needs to be ruthlessly pressed home, especially with some tracks coming up that should suit Mercedes better than Ferrari.

Given the fact the Mercedes has been the stronger car at a larger number of circuits, perhaps Ferrari's approach won't actually change too much. It already needed to be aggressive on and off track to win.

Ferrari could also do with a favour from Red Bull being in the fight, and ideally in the fight with Mercedes. Red Bull could be a world championship spoiler by taking points off either Vettel or Hamilton. Daniel Ricciardo and Verstappen have nothing else to go for beyond the best result possible on a given day, so won't be giving anything away easily.

It was also good to see some of the smaller teams and drivers getting just reward for a difficult day in the office in Singapore. With only 12 finishers and three of the top guys out immediately, survival was the order of the day.

Carlos Sainz Jr fourth, Sergio Perez fifth, Jolyon Palmer sixth and Stoffel Vandoorne seventh proves that these guys are right up there with the best. Give them the tools and they can do the job. But it was really a pity for Nico Hulkenberg, who drove like a demon all afternoon and was then let down by a Renault air valve problem.

The one thing that Singapore qualifying confirmed to me is that Mercedes still has the upper hand when it comes to the engine. I suppose that is something we all know, but if you take Monaco and the Hungaroring, which are both slow-speed tracks, the other Mercedes users weren't too bad relative to their norm.

But in Singapore, which again is a slow-speed track, Force India and Williams both fell backwards on the grid from their own norms by a similar margin to Mercedes.

Vettel might still have a chance, but Ferrari's only option is maximum aggression

When it comes to the faster tracks and Mercedes can let the power unit have its head, then it has the upper hand on both the Ferrari and Renault. But on the lower speeds tracks where the chassis is relatively speaking that bit more important compared to the engine, the Ferrari and Red Bull and even the Renault team could become a bit more of a problem for Mercedes.

The thing with Red Bull is that you can never discount this team. Its car works aerodynamically in many different configurations, has run low downforce at high downforce tracks and performed well - especially on new tyres in qualifying - and we all know that if you qualify well with these cars it makes overtaking in the race very difficult, so Red Bull can be a threat anywhere.

Sepang, Suzuka and Austin should suit Mercedes. That's not to say Ferrari will be in trouble, it's just that the fast sweeping nature of the tracks should suit the longer wheelbase of the W08 and the extra grunt Mercedes can squeeze out of its engine.

As for the other three, Mexico City, Interlagos and Abu Dhabi, I think it will be a little more of a lottery here. And Red Bull can squeeze in among Mercedes and Ferrari on all six remaining tracks.

If Ferrari can come back fighting after its Singapore nightmare, it's going to be a great run to the final chequered flag in Abu Dhabi.

But with Mercedes looking to have, on balance, the edge more often than not over the remaining races, the damage done to Vettel's championship bid by being 28 points behind rather than being a dozen or perhaps even more ahead, cannot be overstated.

The only option now is for Ferrari to go to flat out with aggression and leave nothing on the table. Then Vettel might still have a chance.