Lewis Hamilton continued to match Max Verstappen's feat of scoring in every single race of the 2023 F1 season, with an impressive third-place finish in the Singapore Grand Prix.
The Mercedes driver is now the only man to join Verstappen in that list, with Fernando Alonso only able to manage a 15th-place finish. Alonso had been the only other driver to keep pace with this year's runaway leader, but endured a dreadful time in Singapore on Sunday.
The Aston Martin star had been in the top 10 for much of the race, but he locked up when trying to get into the pit lane, running wide over the white line and getting a five-second time penalty, before pitting again under the Virtual Safety Car.
But due to serving his penalty at that point, he endured a really slow stop that saw him drop out of the points. The Spaniard later managed to run off at Turn 14 to end a miserable day for the two-time world champion, who was left lamenting an "extremely tough" race.
“It was an extremely tough evening: everything that could go wrong did go wrong for us. It’s better that it happened all in one hit – and let’s not forget it’s actually our first non-scoring race of the entire season," he said.
"We came here with pretty high hopes, but Singapore is quite a unique event – race pace is really dictated by the temperature of the tyres – and maybe we went a little bit too hard.
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Clive Rose/Getty Images)"There are lot of things we need to investigate from this weekend – there’s plenty to take away and improve. We need to get better. Let’s just forget about this weekend and focus on the next one in Suzuka.”
While it was a disappointing day for Alonso, it was much better for Hamilton, who capitalised on team-mate George Russell's misfortune to finish third. Russell crashed out on the last lap, with Hamilton duly taking over the final podium position.
If he continues his record and finishes in the points in the remaining seven races, it would be the first time he has scored at every Grand Prix since 2019. And the seven-time world champion was delighted to continue his streak.
"We rolled the dice this weekend and went with an offset tyre strategy. I felt like the race was a two-stop today and the team did an amazing job to get us back up there. Having to give back the two positions from the first corner was a shame," he said.
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"But I kept my head down and kept pushing. Overall this weekend, I haven’t felt fully comfortable with the car. Today it was in a better place though. If I had had that same feeling yesterday, I think I could have been fighting for the front-row.
"That may have changed my race today, but I’m still pleased to get on the podium. It was extremely unfortunate what happened to George. We were pushing so hard to catch the guys ahead and our tyres were so hot.
"He’s been phenomenal all weekend and I know he will bounce back. We’re now looking forward to Japan so let’s see what we can do there."
