Singapore debacle was no racing incident

No entries this week in Sergio Marchionne's Monster Book of Fun, for although Singapore qualifying went as expected, with Ferrari looking set to make amends for the embarrassing defeat at Monza, Lewis Hamilton gave Mercedes what was a wholly unexpected victory, his third in four weekends. Assuredly, with both his cars gone within seconds of the start, the Ferrari chairman will not have been in genial mood.

It was therefore an odd race, this, with no red in it, just as there had been no silver at the post-qualifying press conference. In relative terms, Marina Bay has always been a bogey circuit for Mercedes, and in qualifying Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas had no answer to Sebastian Vettel and Kimi Raikkonen - nor, for that matter, to Max Verstappen and Daniel Ricciardo.

Stewards decided no one was 'wholly or predominantly to blame' for the startline crash. Either they - or I - need an appointment at Specsavers

A Red Bull, in fact, was fastest in every session - until Q3, when as usual Mercedes and Ferrari flicked up the power that last notch (a facility sadly unavailable to Renault, let alone Honda). Though this was enough to help Vettel to pole position, it didn't allow Hamilton or Bottas into the top four.

Even though it included a sizeable clout against a wall, Vettel's lap was something to see, but still Ricciardo remained confident of a win for Red Bull. Hamilton, meantime, was glum, but on race morning his spirits lifted: for the first time in its 10-year history, the Singapore Grand Prix had rain, and as soon as he saw it, Hamilton believed a victory was on. In the event he didn't even have to fight for it.

The debacle at the start - which accounted not only for the Ferraris, but also Verstappen's Red Bull and Fernando Alonso's McLaren - was investigated by the stewards, and if that were no surprise in itself, rather more of one was their decision that no action need be taken, because no one was "wholly or predominantly to blame for the incident". Either they - or perhaps I - are in urgent need of an appointment at Specsavers.

In the incident I saw, and subsequently watched again umpteen times, from the front row Vettel and Verstappen were relatively slow away, with Vettel then doing his usual number, chopping across to block Verstappen.

As we know, such driving manners have long been accepted - even acceptable - in Formula 1, but they necessarily rely on the guy being squeezed having the space to react, and that Verstappen didn't have, for by now Raikkonen, who had made a blistering getaway, was alongside him. Carambolage followed.

How the stewards can have concluded that no one was "wholly or predominantly to blame", I am at a loss to understand. Can anyone tell me what Verstappen or Raikkonen did wrong? Until Vettel clumsily intervened, they were running straight, side by side, giving each other room, and in my judgement they were utterly blameless. Emphatically, as Verstappen said, this was not simply 'a racing incident'.

Still, the stewards chose to see it differently, and Vettel, who had already racked up an impressive number of points on his 'bad behaviour' card, was given no more. In terms of the world championship that is perhaps just as well, for otherwise the possibility of a one-race ban might have come into play, and that would never do.

In a world ever more obsessed with conspiracy theories, it was no surprise to note on the websites all manner of responses to the accident, many of them not less than moronic, like the one suggesting that not only had it been all Verstappen's fault, but that he was on a promise: if he took out the Ferraris, a Mercedes drive was guaranteed in 2019. On these occasions the sheer anger of such mouth-breathers is disturbing, as with those constantly within a beat of road rage. Let's say it again: this is only a sport.

Some will argue that there was no need to punish Vettel, that in stupidly putting at risk a likely victory he had done that to himself, and more. In itself, that is undeniable, and we may come to look back on it as the moment he lost the world championship. That said, I am always happy to see the biter bit, and to me this sort of driving has no place in racing at any level, let alone Formula 1. "Any idiot can block," as Gilles Villeneuve used contemptuously to say.

In point of fact, had there been no coming-together, the likelihood is that Raikkonen would have led into the first corner, then - given that he well knows what is expected of him - let Vettel through at the first opportunity.

As it was, Vettel quite unnecessarily threw 25 points away, and took three innocent bystanders with him: after a scintillating start, Alonso was up in third place, having sidestepped the mayhem, but it caught up with him at the first corner, where Raikkonen unavoidably pitched Verstappen into the McLaren.

What looked like being an intriguing race was thus effectively neutralised in the opening seconds, and Hamilton, scarcely able to believe his luck, found himself in the lead. As his race engineer said, it was now a matter of bringing the car safely home, but Hamilton had already worked that out for himself, and he made no mistakes.

After qualifying he had given himself little chance of taking on Ferrari and Red Bull, but Sunday's rain cheered him, for there is none better on a treacherous surface, and perhaps he might anyway have come out on top. As it was, the carnage left him with only Ricciardo to worry about, and the Red Bull's pace was compromised almost from the outset by a gearbox problem.

Even by the standards of today, overtaking in Singapore is difficult, more so than anywhere save Monaco, and, with four leading lights immediately wiped out, perhaps inevitably the race was as flat as it was long. Hamilton won't care, though: it's winning when you shouldn't that settles world championships.