MOTORSPORT: Ricciardo hanging in there

Another GP victory for Mercedes and Hamilton, but ignominious failure on Rosberg's similar car, while Penske is the hottest team in NASCAR right now

Hamilton takes world championship lead, both Red Bulls on podium

Daniel Ricciardo is closer to the lead of the Formula One World Championship than he was before the Singapore Grand Prix, but – with five rounds remaining – he remains a very long shot for the title.

Despite inconsistent power from the Renault unit in his Red Bull car, Ricciardo finished third in Singapore's night race, behind the Mercedes of Lewis Hamilton and Red Bull teammate Sebastian Vettel.

Hamilton (pictured in Singapore) has taken the championship lead after his Mercedes teammate Nico Rosberg had to retire before quarter distance.

Rosberg was pushed from the grid as other cars began the formation lap and had been lucky even to start from the pitlane after a major issue, clearly visible through the controls on his steering wheel, which the team blamed on a broken wiring loom in the steering column.

Penske, the iconic American team entering Australia's V8 Supercar Championship next year, has won both the first two races in NASCAR's Chase to the Sprint Cup title with its Fords – Joey Logano victorious today at New Hampshire after Brad Keselowski's success the previous weekend at Chicagoland Speedway. Australia's Marcos Ambrose, who is to race for Penske and Dick Johnson in V8 Supercars next season, was 24th at Loudon, New Hampshire.

Charismatic rally ace Petter Solberg has won his third straight round of the new Rallycross World Championship in Germany in a Citroen, the Norwegian beating the international star of last year's Bathurst 1000, Swede Mattias Ekstrom, in an Audi.

And the Porsche 919 Hybrid that Mark Webber drove in the rain-interrupted day-night World Endurance Championship round at the Circuit of the Americas finished fifth in the six-hour event, behind two Audi R18 e-tron quattros, a Toyota TS040 Hybrid and the other Porsche 919, which led much of the race.

Mathematically Ricciardo's still in hunt, but it's a Mercedes raffle

Daniel Ricciardo was 72 points off the F1 championship lead after the Italian GP two weeks ago. Now he's 60.

The new leader is Lewis Hamilton, by three points over Nico Rosberg, who didn't get to add to his score in Singapore.

It would need some miraculous dual retirements by the Mercs for Ricciardo to catch the pair ahead of him, and Red Bull clearly don't regard it as a big enough chance to implement team orders by ordering Sebastian Vettel to let the Australian finish ahead of him.

Even though the winner of the final race of the season in Abu Dhabi will earn double the normal points, so too will the next nine drivers to finish – so it's still a long, long shot Ricciardo can be world champion in his first year with Red Bull Racing.

Vettel notched his best finish of the season in Singapore – second – on the street circuit where he had won the previous three years.

Hamilton scored his second straight victory and his seventh of the year – 13.5 seconds ahead of Vettel.

Ricciardo was only 0.739 seconds behind Vettel and 1.116 seconds ahead of the Ferrari of Fernando Alonso. And Ricciardo had "some power issues coming and going" throughout the race.

It began on the dash to the first corner, where Vettel squeezed ahead of him, but after the seven laps behind the safety car mid-race Ricciardo said his car was "pretty consistently down on power".

"Coming up through the gears I would get a bit of power and then it would drop and then it would come again," he said.

"We definitely had a few issues and we tried fixing them, but we didn't quite clear it all up.

"It did cost us a bit, but we still got it to the end.

"Normally if we have those glitches after a couple of laps we clear it, but this one pretty much carried through all race.

"I guess I was a bit frustrated, a bit concerned as well that we wouldn't get it to the flag, but luckily it held on."

Red Bull team principal Christian Horner said that the problem had "required a lot of management to try to help him out".

"The problem was intermittent – on some laps he would lose three or four tenths, one some laps it would be nothing," Horner said.

Renault Sport F1 track support leader Thierry Salvi said: "Daniel had reliability issues with his power unit and had to manage the energy management in very tricky situations. He again proved his ability to stay calm and focused, even in difficult situations, and stayed very quick."

Rosberg says reliability issues 'happening too much'

Mercedes has won 11 of the 14 GPs this season – and Ricciardo the other three – but the tristar brand has still had some embarrassing mechanical unreliability, with Nico Rosberg's retirement in Singapore the latest.

"We've had quite a few this year and that's our weakness," Rosberg said after seeing teammate Lewis Hamilton snatch his world title lead.

"We need to get to the bottom of these things and make the car 100 per cent reliable. It's happening too much."

Mercedes motorsport boss Toto Wolff said the problem with Rosberg's car in Singapore "looks like a broken loom in the steering column, which was within the duty cycle and not towards the end of its lifecycle".

"It just shut the whole thing down," Wolff said.

"The only thing that worked was the gear change and then the radio came back. (Sensibly, the clamp on radio contact between the pitwall and drivers to have started in Singapore had been postponed until next season).

"There was no hybrid energy any more, so when we called him in we changed the steering wheel and tried to get it going, but it wouldn't.

"The only way to get it going was to get first gear in at high revs, and this is when I said, 'Stop – we don't want to have a jack flying out of the rear of the car and hurting somebody.

"He was a minute down by then, so that was it."

Rosberg said that "none of the steering wheel functions worked, so I had no hybrid power, no DRS (drag reduction system)".

"The gear paddles sort of worked, which was strange, but they would always shift up two gears at a time, so I had no fourth or sixth gear," he said.

"It was just all over the place – and that's why I was slow.

"My brake balance was completely in the wrong place and I couldn't brake properly because I couldn't change that, so everything was all over the place … the whole car wasn't working.

"Even coming into the pitstop I didn't have a pit limiter … I couldn't go into neutral.

"They were going to jack me up. I would have to go full speed, then they drop the car and go, but they decided that was too dangerous."

Meanwhile, Hamilton had the "clean weekend" he needed to get back on title terms with Rosberg, admitting – diplomatically for him – that "it would have been a hardcore race if Nico was in the race with me" and that, from the Mercedes corporate viewpoint, "we want to continue getting those one-twos still".

Formula One World Championship driver standings after 14 of 19 rounds – 1. Lewis Hamilton (Great Britain, Mercedes) 241 points; 2. Nico Rosberg (Germany, Mercedes) 238; 3. Daniel Ricciardo (Australia, Red Bull–Renault) 181; 4. Fernando Alonso (Spain, Ferrari) 133; 5. Sebastian Vettel (Germany, Red Bull-Renault) 124; 6. Valtteri Bottas (Finland, Williams-Mercedes) 122; 7. Jenson Button (GB, McLaren-Mercedes) 72; 8. Nico Hulkenberg (Germany, Force India-Mercedes) 72; 9. Felipe Massa (Brazil, Williams-Mercedes) 65; 10. Sergio Perez (Mexico, Force India-Mercedes) 45; 11. Kimi Raikkonen (Finland, Ferrari) 45; 12. Kevin Magnussen (Denmark, McLaren-Mercedes) 39; 13. Jean-Eric Vergne (France, Toro Rosso-Renault) 19; 14. Romain Grosjean (France, Lotus-Renault) 8; 15. Daniil Kvyat (Russia, Toro Rosso-Renault) 8; 16. Jules Bianchi (France, Marussia-Ferrari) 2.

F1 constructors' championship standings – 1. Mercedes 479 points; 2. Red Bull-Renault 305; 3. Williams-Mercedes 187; 4. Ferrari 178; 5. Force India-Mercedes 117; 6. McLaren 111; 7. Toro Rosso-Renault 27; 8. Lotus-Renault 8; 9. Marussia-Ferrari 2.

MOTORSPORT: Ricciardo hanging in there

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