Zoom A different look to the podium in Singapore

Doing something a little different paid off for Fernando Alonso this evening in Singapore as he took victory from 15th position on the grid from Nico Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton in what was a dramatic first floodlit Formula One event.

Q: Fernando, bad luck with mechanical trouble on Saturday but you made up for it today with a fantastic drive.
Fernando ALONSO: Yeah, fantastic. A first podium of the season and first victory as well and I am extremely happy. I cannot believe it right now, I think I need a couple of days to realise we won a race this year. It seems impossible all through the season to be close to the top guys and here suddenly we have been competitive from Friday. As you said yesterday we were unlucky in qualifying and today very lucky in the race. Obviously we started at the back and the first safety car helped me a lot and I was able to win the race.

Q: The first safety car was caused by your team-mate Nelson Piquet. You came in on lap 12, three laps before the safety car, which really gave you a strong position when everybody else had to pit.
FA: Yeah, as I said unlucky yesterday but very, very lucky today. We chose to do a very aggressive first stint as we knew starting 15 you cannot overtake anyone here. We thought about a one stop strategy but we had some concerns with the brakes, so we said one stop is not possible, so we tried something very different. We tried a very short first stint and tried to make up as many places as possible at the start and on the first lap and then see from there. The start was good but obviously not good enough and then as I said very lucky but the pace was there as afterwards all through the race we were able to pull some distance, some gap, to the guys behind us and this was thanks to the car which was super today.

Q: And the pace was there at the second restart on the Bridgestone primes when you pulled out two or three seconds a lap.
FA: I think I had a little bit of an advantage compared to Nico because of the tyres. I think the prime were a little bit better, so I was with the better tyre in the last stint of the race. I was running with low revs when I was alone and then at the restart I put maximum engine and thanks to the tyres as well I was able to pull away from Nico.

Q: Nico, your best ever finish in Formula One. It did not look good for you at the start but it seemed you were forced to come into the pits under the safety car conditions and incur a penalty.