Lewis Hamilton said he had been dreaming of his victory in the Singapore Grand Prix yesterday, which resulted in him replacing Nico Rosberg at the top of the Formula One world championship table.

Rosberg was 22 points ahead of Hamilton but failed to finish and fell three points behind. Sebastian Vettel was second, his best result of the season, ahead of his team-mate Daniel Ricciardo and Fernando Alonso.

Hamilton said: “I was dreaming about this last night but you never think it’s going to happen. Thanks to my team, knowing we have a car we can fight with and the way it felt on track, it’s incredible. I was looking for that clean weekend and this has been it. It has not been perfect as Nico didn’t finish, so there are things we can still work on. I absolutely want it to be decided in a battle between us on the track and not technical problems.

“Nico not being there [at the start of the race] was a massive weight off my mind. I’m not thinking about momentum because I know from experience it could all easily be snatched away any day.”

A disappointed Rosberg said: “It was the toughest day for me this year. Even worse than Silverstone [where he also retired]. None of the steering wheel functions worked – so I had no DRS, and so on. The gears were all over the place. My brake balance was totally in the wrong place. Everything was all over the place . . .

“From a team perspective unreliability is our weakness and we need to get to the bottom of it and try and improve on that.”

Reliability

Niki Lauda, Mercedes’ non-executive chairman, agreed. “We need to get the cars reliable,” he said. “This is what we are here for. We need to work harder on this.”

With Red Bull taking the other two podium places with Vettel and Ricciardo, team principal Christian Horner has not yet conceded the title. “They both mathematically have a chance in the championship but it is a long shot,” he said.

With double points available in the last race in Abu Dhabi, Red Bull have a chance, but it looks remote.

Rosberg quit on the 14th lap but in essence his race never got started. He was stranded on the grid when the other cars set off for their formation lap and was then told by his team: “The only thing working on your dash are your gearshift controls.”

A faulty loom in his steering column was the problem. By the sixth lap he was already 40 seconds behind Hamilton, stuck in 20th place between the Marussia of Max Chilton and the Caterham of Marcus Ericsson, an unfamiliar view of proceedings for the German.

Hamilton made a surging start and the famous floodlit street race threatened to become a yawn.

But it was reprieved by the emergence of the safety car at the halfway stage, the seventh time this has happened in as many races at the Marina Bay Circuit.

Hamilton, who had changed his tyres five laps earlier, was now required to build a lead of about 28 seconds (the total time lost in an average pit stop) to allow him to change to the soft compound tyre and still come out in front of Vettel, who was in second place.

Explode

He did manage to build up an advantage of 25.2 seconds before his team brought him in as the driver complained: “I’m not sure whether my tyres are going to explode or not.”

When he returned to the track he was behind Vettel, but in front of the other Red Bull of Daniel Ricciardo and Fernando Alonso’s Ferrari.

But with superior speed, fresh rubber and DRS, Hamilton had too many weapons for the world champion and went past him a little more than a lap later. Guardian Service