Kubica enjoys charge to seventh

The Renault driver had been running sixth when he was forced to stop on lap 46 to have a punctured right-rear tyre replaced.

Upon returning to the track in 13th, the Pole spent the remaining 15 laps fighting his way back into a solid points position, with his recovery including a spectacular side-by-side battle with team-mate Vitaly Petrov over the bridge.

"The last few laps were definitely the most exciting part of the race," Kubica said. "The engineers spotted a right-rear puncture on the data - it must have been some debris that cut the tyre, because I didn't touch the wall and couldn't feel anything in the cockpit.

"That stop dropped me from sixth to 13th position. I had much fresher tyres than the cars in front in those last laps, but it's still not easy to pass in Singapore, so it was good fun picking them off one by one. In the end, I got back to seventh place, which meant we only lost one position compared to our maximum this afternoon.

"Ultimately, if somebody had said that I would finish seventh today, and make one more pit stop than the cars around me, then I'd definitely have taken it."