2016 Singapore Grand Prix winner Nico Rosberg admits Red Bull’s decision to pit Daniel Ricciardo for a set of supersoft tyres at the end of the race made him “a little bit uncomfortable”.
Having led from pole position, the Mercedes driver saw his Australian rival switch to a three-stop strategy and immediately lap around three seconds faster than him, which set up a thrilling finish to the 61-lap night contest.
Rosberg stuck to his two-stop plan and eventually held off a charging Ricciardo by 0.4s to seal his eighth win of the season and re-take the championship lead from team-mate Lewis Hamilton.
“Red Bull tried something really funky and went for the late pit stop to come out with some fresh tyres,” Rosberg said in his post-Marina Bay video blog. “They tried to challenge me until the end of the race, and that was a bit uncomfortable. In that moment, I did not really know where Daniel Ricciardo was and how quickly he was catching me.
“It did not really matter because what I had to do was to get my head down and just push and get the best out of it, go as fast as I can. I knew that in the end, in the last two laps he could be there to challenge me. Until then, I did not look back. And in the last two laps, I checked and... I thought ‘OK, that should be enough to win’ but still it was so close in the end.”
Rosberg was also very pleased with how his Mercedes team managed to turn its form around at a venue where it had struggled 12 months earlier.
“In Singapore last year, we got destroyed by Ferrari and Red Bull. The team did an awesome job to turn it around and understand what we did wrong last year and get it alright this year.
“That was all the more special to win on Red Bull’s best track - we think it’s their best track. It just shows the level where we’re at now with our engineering and everything.
“Also for me, Singapore had not treated me well in the past years, especially 2014 breaking down on the start whilst I was in the championship battle so to get the win is obviously very special.”
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