When Piquet Jr. crashed his Renault R28 into the wall on Lap 13, the Brazilian was leading the race and looked very strong for a win or even a podium in the series' very first night race. However, due to the safety car in the following lap and a foolish mistake by his pit crew – who forgot to detach the fuel hose from his car – Massa left Singapore point-less.
Hamilton, on the other hand, scored a podium spot and put himself in a great position for the championship title.
However, the Brit insists his title is legitimate no matter what, as he was not trying to win in Singapore anyway. His focus was to score enough points so he could become world champion, so his strategy was different from race to race. Had Massa won the Singapore GP, he would have pushed harder in the races to come.
“I am a worthy world champion. I have got the number one on my car and I deserved it. When you are leading the championship it is a different mind-set to when you are chasing. I was just thinking about the championship in the remaining races and getting the points I needed to win the title. If I had needed wins I would have gone for them,” said Ham in an interview with Britain's News of the World.
“I was driving with one eye on the world championship and wasn't going to take too many risks. I was happy to finish on the podium. There are things that happened last year with penalties that affected my points. And I still think I won in Belgium. I think that was my race,” said Hamilton, who was heavily penalized during last year's championship.
His reference to Spa is for the time he was demoted from 1st place at the finish line after shortcutting a corner and passing Ferrari's Kimi Raikkonen in the process. He was docked 25 seconds after taking the chequered flag, which demoted him from 1st to 3rd place.
Google News