Did Vettel always have Ricciardo covered?

On a weekend when the erstwhile dominant Mercedes team struggled for pace, and tyres once again took centre stage (though this time not because of blowouts or pressure controversies), former Red Bull team-mates Sebastian Vettel and Daniel Ricciardo reminded the world why they are currently two of the best Formula 1 drivers on the grid.

These two were a clear step ahead of their opposition around the floodlit Marina Bay street circuit. But neither was a clear step ahead of the other in a tight 61-lap race, with a definite question mark over whether the timely double appearance of the safety car ultimately helped Vettel's Ferrari free itself from Ricciardo's baited hook.

Vettel has a supreme record around this place, where the cars are less dependent on their aerodynamics and engine power, while skilful drivers - when possessing cars with a good mechanical set-up, strong and stable brakes, and decent traction - can really come to the fore. His third victory of 2015 for Ferrari means the four-time world champion has now won four of the last five editions of this race.

The plethora of slow-speed, tight radius, short duration corners that make up the majority of this circuit really seem to suit Vettel's preferred driving style.

He likes to make his turns short and sharp, using the brakes to rotate the car aggressively, then accelerate away with the steering wheel as straight as possible, as early as possible.

Vettel thrived in Singapore in his V8-powered Red Bull heyday © XPB

It's something that worked outstandingly well for him in the latter days of the V8-engined era, allowing him to pick up the throttle super-early, and keep the exhaust gasses feeding the diffuser to generate extra grip, but not so much in the early part of last season, as he struggled to adjust to the loss of this technology, and the effect of hybrid turbo V6s and electronic braking systems on the way F1 cars handle.

Ricciardo possesses a more classical driving style. It generally relies a bit more on carrying corner speed and using the car's momentum to progress through the turns as quickly as possible. This is perhaps naturally better suited to this current generation of car, which lacks downforce and doesn't always seem to respond so well to aggressive inputs.

It's possible to be devastatingly fast with either method, of course, and an undercooked Vettel was still very strong here last year. Second place to Lewis Hamilton was in fact the best result of his 2014 campaign. But close behind, just 0.739 seconds in fact, was Ricciardo - hounding his illustrious team-mate all the way...

This year provided an encore, only this time Vettel was racing in the red of Ferrari, and their personal duel was for ultimate glory - thanks to Mercedes' baffling inability to make Pirelli's super-soft tyre work properly on this track, and the fact their respective team-mates were not quite on the same level here.

Vettel showed his true class with an absolutely stunning performance to take pole position in qualifying on Saturday. The German was really at his hard-charging, wall-skimming best as he put the SF15-T on the front of the grid by over half a second from Ricciardo's Red Bull.

It was a virtuoso performance that drew admiring applause from the crowds, and German-accented Italian whoops and cheers from within the Ferrari's cockpit.

Vettel was thrilled with his pole lap © XPB

"Friday was not perfect, but we improved the car overnight," said Vettel. "We picked up so much pace. The car was fantastic with one lap. Amazing feeling; so much adrenaline in qualifying!"

A little less heralded but no less impressive was the job Ricciardo did to split the two Ferraris and qualify second.

Red Bull set the pace narrowly in Friday practice and carried strong form through to qualifying, though it did not make quite as big a step forward as Ferrari. But Kimi Raikkonen seemed to be struggling to keep his rear tyres in shape in comparison to Vettel, which allowed Ricciardo to set up Sunday's showdown with his former team-mate.

"It's definitely a driver's track," explained Ricciardo. "All street circuits are, but it's a long lap, you need to be smart around here. Sure, going balls to the wall is good, but there's a way to go balls to the wall round here.

"I won't give everything away, but for sure there is a level of maturity that needs to be taken around this track, an approach which is somewhat aggressive but disciplined.

"I think a few of us guys have found that balance. Me, since HRT [where he made his F1 debut in 2011], I've always gone well here; I've always had strong qualifying. It's technical, it's fun. I normally like high-speed circuits, but there's something here which has clicked."

Ricciardo "clicked" with Singapore when he first encountered it with HRT in 2011 © XPB

The pre-race concern at Red Bull was that Vettel would ace the start and then do what he does best - lead a race imperiously from the front. He got the first part right no problem, and when he pulled out 5.282 seconds on Ricciardo over the first four laps, those fears on the Red Bull pitwall must have deepened.

Not in Ricciardo's 'honey badger' helmet. The Australian remained confident Red Bull's long-run pace was slightly superior to Ferrari's (analysis from practice suggested Red Bull had an advantage of 0.1-0.2s per lap on both compounds of tyre), and watching his former colleague tear off at such a rate only amplified his conviction: Vettel was going too fast, too soon.

"To be honest I was loving it!" Ricciardo said. "I was like, 'OK this is awesome - unless he keeps that pace, but I don't think he can sustain that'.

"Obviously I saw him come closer to me, [thought] 'this is good', and then I saw on one of the screens a Force India in the tyres and I was like 'no!'

"I knew that was our best chance..."

What had alarmed Ricciardo was the first of two safety car interventions that interrupted the flow of the fight at the front of this race.

When Nico Hulkenberg's Force India collided with Felipe Massa's Williams as the Brazilian rejoined from his first pitstop on lap 13, Ricciardo had just taken a big half-second chunk out of Vettel's early lead, knocking it back down to 3.680s.

Hulkenberg and Massa's collision brought out the safety car © XPB

Of course the impression is that Ricciardo was coming back strongly at Vettel and, had the race continued without interruption, might have been able to get close enough to jump the Ferrari at the first round of stops.

But a comparison of the average pace of both drivers over that first 13-lap stint, if you ignore the banzai first lap that put Vettel over three seconds clear of the field, suggests they were pretty much neck and neck. Vettel averaged 1m52.526s from lap two to lap 12, while Ricciardo averaged 1m52.585s.

Ricciardo took 0.337s out of Vettel on lap 10, 0.204s on lap 11 and 0.489s on lap 12. He then set a personal best in the first sector of lap 13 (0.034s slower than Vettel), and took another a tenth out of his rival through sector two. But compared to those other three laps, Vettel had arrested the slide in sector two, where he'd previously been losing the time, suggesting he still had some tyre life in reserve.

Then Hulkenberg crashed, Vettel pitted, Ricciardo followed suit, and the chase was off temporarily.

"I was driving a bit into the unknown, so I was trying to put a gap," explained Vettel. "I was surprised to put five seconds straight away; then eased off.

"I was probably pushing a bit hard, which allowed Daniel to be three tenths quicker at the end [of the stint]. I had bit of margin left."

Force India wreckage removed from the scene, racing resumed on lap 19. Vettel appeared to drive more tactically in this second phase of the race, simply managing his super-soft tyres to start with and keeping Ricciardo's Red Bull at arm's length while backing up the rest of the top order.

Red Bull felt the safety cars let Vettel off the hook © LAT

The gap hovered between 0.6 and 0.9s over the next nine tours, and the fact both Raikkonen (who dropped away steadily from the first two early on in the race), and Hamilton (who was now running on the harder-compound soft tyre) were pretty much matching Vettel at this stage suggested the leader was proceeding cautiously.

Then Vettel decided to turn the screw, slamming in a laptime two seconds quicker than Ricciardo on lap 27 to suddenly open a gap. The Red Bull took another three tours to arrest the slide, by which point Vettel was 4s up the road.

"In the second stint he understood a little bit more what he needed to do," reckoned Ricciardo. "I think we maybe still could have had a chance in the second stint. I felt with the option I was able to keep the tyre a lot better than him in the last few laps."

But in actual fact Ricciardo made no inroads into Vettel's advantage up to lap 37, at which point the safety car was deployed for a second time when a 'track invader' wandered onto the circuit on the straight that links Turns 13 and 14.

Vettel had just pulled out 0.4s on Ricciardo through the first sector of the lap, suggesting he again had pace in hand to cover his rival's potential challenge, despite the fact this bizarre incident granted the Ferrari what Red Bull boss Christian Horner described as another "free pitstop".

"In the second stint I was dictating the pace; round here it is not so easy to overtake so I was using that," confirmed Vettel. "I knew it was impossible for anyone to go 40 laps on the prime [soft] tyre, they fall apart at the end."

Knowing he was approaching the window for a second pitstop, Vettel stretched a gap to protect himself against losing track position should Red Bull attempt an earlier pitstop for Ricciardo. As Vettel said: "It worked pretty well."

Before this unfortunate second interruption, both drivers had been lapping up to a second quicker than their main rivals, and once racing resumed for the final time on lap 41, it was time for the two leaders to take the gloves off in their personal battle over the remainder of the grand prix.

Vettel struck the first blow, opening up a 2.241s lead over the course of the first lap following the restart. He worked that advantage gradually up to 3.142s by lap 47, before Ricciardo started coming back at the Ferrari.

Vettel greets the ecstatic Ferrari team © XPB

"He sort of pulled away at the start and I wasn't too fussed," said Ricciardo. "I knew the stint was really long, but then with about 12-15 laps to go, I was like 'the tyres are going to last, let's just get into it!'

"And I think he was getting into it as well. I was hoping that maybe his tyres would go. I think at the end I probably had a bit more life in my tyres, but the difference on the prime [soft] wasn't as big, and the degradation wasn't as big.

"He was able to manage it pretty well."

Excluding the final lap of the race, where Vettel clearly backed off in sealing the 42nd grand prix victory of his career (pulling him one clear of Ayrton Senna into third on the all-time list of race victors) the Ferrari was 0.12s faster per lap on average than the Red Bull over that final 20-lap sprint to the flag.

VETTEL'S ADVANTAGE OVER RICCIARDO

Raikkonen's third-placed Ferrari was over six tenths per lap slower on average; Rosberg's fourth-placed Mercedes over a second per lap slower. As Horner pointed out afterwards, Vettel and Ricciardo were in "a league of their own" here.

Ultimately, regardless of the safety car interventions, it seems Vettel's Ferrari held a narrow but crucial advantage over Ricciardo's Red Bull, particularly early on in the stints, which allowed him to just about dictate terms to his former team-mate over the course of the longest race of the season.

"I think I did what I could today," said Ricciardo, who had the consolation of denying Vettel a 'clean sweep' by nicking fastest lap (by just 0.028s) during that final furious bout. "The way I attacked when I needed, it was all I could do. Seb's not dumb either, he's smart; I think he did what he could do as well."

"Today was classic Sebastian Vettel," added Horner. "Managing the race from the front, looking after the tyres, not making any mistakes. But he didn't get the fastest lap..."

No matter. This was still a race weekend where Sebastian Vettel reminded everyone just why he is a four-time champion of the world, chased all the way by a driver in Daniel Ricciardo who is looking more and more like a champion of the future.