Renault advisor Alain Prost believes the company will reap the rewards of investing heavily in Daniel Ricciardo from 2019.

At the start of the summer break, the Australian shocked the Formula 1 grid by announcing his exit from Red Bull to join the French manufacturer next season.

One of the main attractions to Renault's advance, some believe, is an increase in his salary compared to that he earns with the Milton Keynes-based squad, but the four-time F1 champion doesn't see that as a bad thing.

“Daniel is more expensive than other drivers,” Prost told The Guardian newspaper. “When you need that to help the team we did it. Money is not a problem but it has to be justified.

“We have two top drivers, maybe one of the best lineups in F1 today.

“It shows everybody outside and inside that we want to do the best, the right choices at the right moment but we are not going to spend money unless we know that it is worth it. Mercedes and Ferrari may have a different philosophy.”

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Another question many have over Ricciardo's decision is why he would leave a race-winning team like Red Bull to join a squad which hasn't won since it was Lotus in 2013 and currently sits in the midfield.

The 29-year-old isn't afraid to admit success will take time, however.

“I think it’s realistic to think a podium ‘shoey’ could come in 2020,” he told Sky Sports.

“I don’t want to count off a podium next year but I think realistically it has to come under some circumstances, if it’s a bit of a crazy race like Baku 2016 or something.

“I think it’s going to take another 12 months to be a podium contender but that’s the trajectory they’re on.”

The 'Honey Badger' also believes he will not be missing out on much by not being with Red Bull next season.

“I really see it hard at the moment for anyone to fight for a title other than Ferrari and Mercedes in the next 12 months," he claimed.

“Obviously Red Bull are an unknown now with Honda, but still the odds are with Ferrari and Mercedes.

“I kind of feel like 2019 is going to be a building year, regardless of where I was going to be, so we’ll try and do what we can next year but attack in 2020.”

Lewis Hamilton led every lap as he converted pole into a commanding victory at the Singapore Grand Prix.

The Mercedes driver survived a brief scare against traffic mid-race but, apart from that, comfortably had the pace to keep his rivals at bay crossing the line nine seconds clear of Max Verstappen.

For Sebastian Vettel, he appeared to have the hard work done when he produced a bold move on the Red Bull into Turn 7 on the opening lap to move up to second.

That came just moments before a Safety Car was called for an incident involving the two Force India's, as Sergio Perez punted Esteban Ocon into the wall on the exit of Turn 3.

However, Ferrari's strategy would let him down as an attempted undercut on Hamilton left him stuck behind Perez for a lap and allowed the Dutchman to go three laps longer after a steady first stint protecting his tyres and emerge ahead to retake second.

The top three ran pretty equidistantly for much of the race as again protecting tyres proved crucial to making a one-stop strategy work, particularly for Vettel after he was put on the Ultrasoft tyre at his stop with those around him on Soft.

Their respective teammates battled it out behind as Valtteri Bottas, Kimi Raikkonen and Daniel Ricciardo completed the top six, with the Australian the last of the lead drivers to pit on lap 28 and looking to attack in the second half of the race.

Further back, a poor start for Perez was compounded as Force India reacted to early stops by Romain Grosjean and Nico Hulkenberg behind only to emerge stuck behind the Williams of Sergey Sirotkin.

Despite having much more pace, the Mexican couldn't find a way through as he complained about the Russian going slowly through apexes and then bolting out of corners.

Eventually, the frustration became too much as Perez had a second collision of the race hitting Sirotkin as they battled in front of the grandstand section, earning himself a drive-through penalty.

The Williams then almost played another crucial factor as, with Romain Grosjean now on his tail, Hamilton tried to lap them but couldn't find a clean way past allowing Verstappen to almost squeeze past the Mercedes approaching Turn 10.

The Haas driver would later be given a five-second time penalty for what FIA race director Charlie Whiting called "one of the worst" instances of a driver ignoring blue flags.

Lewis would defend his place, however, and once back in clear air pulled away from the Red Bull, who suffered from false neutrals and other engine gremlins throughout the race.

With the top three settled, as Vettel fell further and further back in third, the main battle was between Bottas, Raikkonen and Ricciardo for fourth. 

Despite the Ferrari and Red Bull being faster, the difference in pace was never enough to allow Kimi the chance to attack as the three drivers finished in that order from P4 to P6 and covered by just two seconds over the line.

In the midfield, a longer strategy proved decisive as Fernando Alonso gave McLaren their best result since Australia in seventh, holding off the man who'll replace him next season, Carlos Sainz in eighth.

Charles Leclerc scored his first points since Austria in ninth with Hulkenberg completing the top 10 in the second Renault.

Though Marina Bay is known as an attritional race, Ocon would be the only retirement as Sirotkin's evening as a roadblock saw him the last of the 19 finishers.

In the championship, Hamilton now holds a 40-point lead over Vettel with six races to go, the first of which is the Russian Grand Prix in Sochi on September 30th.

Full results from the Singapore can be seen below:

Esteban Ocon reveals he did receive an apology from teammate Sergio Perez after the two Force India's collided at the start of the Singapore GP.

The Frenchman was looking to make a bold move around the outside of his fellow pink panther at Turn 3 on the opening lap before he was punted into the wall by Perez ending his race.

“He apologised to me, in the room he said he apologised,” Ocon told Motorsport.com. “But it’s not because of that that everything’s gone.

“The only thing I look at at the moment is that we come home with no points on a weekend where we should have been both in the points, getting strong results.

“We had the pace for it and yeah, it’s a terrible situation to be where we are now. That’s all I can say, there’s nothing else to comment about."

Though the stewards declared it a racing incident between the pair, Force India boss Otmar Szafnauer appeared to put blame solely on the Mexican.

“It’s unacceptable for them to come together like that in an area where there’s no run-off room,” he told Sky Sports. “If it’s your teammate, you’ve got to give them room."

His response to the incident was immediate too, reinstating the team orders from the end of last year.

“We’re back to the old rules,” he added. The team is more important than one individual. If that’s what they’re going to do, we’ll have to take control from here.

“We allowed them to race on Lap 1 whereas in the past we didn’t let them race on Lap 1 and now we can remove that.”

Ocon, who may not make it to the end of the season with Force India anyway, denies this could be the start of another tetchy period between himself and Perez after the pair collided several times in 2017.

“No, it’s not the same situation as last year,” he said, “we’ve turned the page from there and that’s it really.”

Lewis Hamilton expressed his own shock and surprise after claiming a dominant pole position for Sunday's Singapore Grand Prix.

On a weekend where his Mercedes team was expected to struggle, instead the current championship leader produced a stunning first lap of 1m36.015s in Q3 to smash the circuit record and finish three-tenths clear of Max Verstappen.

“Wow, wow!” he proclaimed in the post-session interview. “That was a hard qualifying session. That lap felt like magic. I don’t know where it came from but it all came together.

“I don’t think there was a moment in the lap that was wide or any problems. It was just perfectly to the limit. It felt like one of the best laps I remember feeling.

“Honestly I’m super overwhelmed. My heart is racing."

Also Read:

• Vettel: Ferrari didn't "put it together" in Singapore GP qualifying

It was thought the key to his incredible time was finding the sweet spot with tyre performance on the very sensitive Hypersoft compound which is being used at Marina Bay for the first time.

“Tyres are no silver bullet, but it’s just a few things we’ve understood since Spa in where we’ve got our advantage from," Mercedes motorsport boss Toto Wolff claimed later.

The Austrian too was left in awe of his lead driver, however.

"Yeah, it’s stardust… I can’t explain what happened on that (Hamilton) lap. He’s just an exceptional individual and an exceptional driver," he said.

Mercedes motorsport boss Toto Wolff believes the FIA should reconsider the rules for blue flags after both his drivers almost fell victim to backmarkers during the Singapore GP.

After building up a cushion of three seconds after his pit-stop, Lewis Hamilton lost it all and was almost overtaken by Max Verstappen after he came up behind the duelling pair of Romain Grosjean and Sergey Sirotkin.

An indiscretion that earned the Haas driver a five-second penalty as he solely focused on passing the Williams.

“Romain just completely forgot the golden rule of blue flags and that is if you are in a battle you’ve got to forget about your own battle and move over,” explained FIA race director Charlie Whiting.

“I’ve drilled that into them many times, and I think he completely forgot about it. It was probably one of the worst cases of ignoring blue flags that I’ve seen for a long time.”

Wolff later added: "You need to accept that these guys are fighting for position and trying to have their own best race and we have to respect it.

“I think the drivers need to discuss this among themselves – that if the leaders come, and it’s close, that maybe they should have more of a global perspective on what’s happening behind them.

“In a racing car sometimes you don’t know what’s happening and just see that the leader is coming and you’re fighting for your own position. You have to respect everybody’s struggle to perform.”

Later on, Valtteri Bottas was holding off Kimi Raikkonen and Valtteri Bottas in the closing laps with his pace as such that he could not get within the 1.2-second threshold to Nico Hulkenberg ahead to activate the blue flag procedure.

“He was upset because he couldn’t close up to Hulkenberg, which was a shame," the Austrian continued.

“Kimi struggled less so, but when you look at Daniel, who was on a fresher Ultrasoft tyre with probably raw pace two seconds quicker than Kimi, he couldn’t overtake Kimi either.

“So again I think something which we need to look at, whether the gap, the 1.2s, is a gap that needs to be adjusted for street circuits."

Whiting, however, was uninterested in making any changes.

“This time last year it was one second, and we had discussions, and we opened it up to 1.2s,” he told Autosport.

“I don’t think we should go any more than that because then you get into a situation where a driver has to back off and lose a lot more time than he really should to let the other car through if he’s got to do it at his earliest opportunity.

“We don’t want that to happen because it’s not fair.”

Sebastian Vettel believes Ferrari should have been a lot closer to Lewis Hamilton after finishing six-tenths off the pace in qualifying for the Singapore GP.

As the championship leader produced a stunning Q3 lap to not only smash the circuit record but prove Mercedes have cured most of the issues that impacted them in recent years, the German had to settle for third on the grid after going in as the strong favourite.

“Obviously, the gap if you look at it is a surprise but I don’t think it reflects the true performance,” Vettel said after the session. “I think we should have done better. We had the ingredients and we should have put it together. 

"P3 is not a disaster so I am not completely upset but for sure we wanted to get pole," he added. "It was definitely there to grasp but the way qualifying happened, obviously, it wasn’t anymore.

“That is disappointing for now but tomorrow we turn the page and go racing.”

In a Q3 that bared some similarities to Melbourne at the start of the season, it was tyre preparation that appeared to be the key factor with Hamilton finding the absolute sweet spot to take pole by three-tenths over Max Verstappen.

“It is never ideal if you have a mini race on the out lap but there was a lot of cars always around so yeah,” Vettel said, referencing the traffic.

“I mean, you can’t blame it on that. We had two laps and both were not good enough so it is not what I wanted and not what we wanted today.”

Heading into Sunday and a race many consider a must-win, as he sits 30 points behind Hamilton, the 31-year-old made no predictions other than for a tough battle ahead.

“It is very close, across all sessions that everybody has been up top,” he said.

“We can’t expect miracles tomorrow because nobody has the pace to lap the others but overall it is good to have pace and we will see what we can do.”

Sebastian Vettel has reaffirmed his trust in Ferrari claiming he will "always defend" his team, this despite another difficult result at the Singapore GP.

The German was the strong favourite for victory on the streets of Marina Bay based on his previous record and the expectation that Mercedes would struggle, as they have in previous years.

Instead, the brilliance of Lewis Hamilton in qualifying saw him claim pole position before controlling the race, with Vettel a distant third after a wrong strategy call.

Though initially appearing critical of Ferrari, stating that "the way we raced we didn't have a chance" and that the team had underperformed, the 31-year-old insists that was not the case.

“I will always defend the team,” he told Autosport. “The decision we took in the race to try and be aggressive, if it works then it’s great. Today it didn’t work and it didn’t work by quite a bit so we need to look into that.

“Overall if you see the gap at the end it was clear that we were not fast enough in the race. We need to understand why.

"It’s largely down to how we decided to race and which tyres and for how many laps, etc. With what we did, we tried to get to first position and get ahead but Lewis was too quick.

“Once you are ahead you can control the pace around here, but we never got ahead.”

Also Read:

• Hamilton remains wary of Ferrari threat despite increasing lead after Singapore

After his third place in Singapore, falling behind Max Verstappen through the pit-stop phase, it means Vettel now sits 40 points behind Hamilton with six races to go.

“Lewis said he didn’t expect to come here gaining 10 points, we probably didn’t come here expecting to lose 10 points,” he admitted.

“But, having had the race that we had, I think there’s a full justification for losing those 10 points and we take it.

“Obviously, there is still a long way to go and a lot of points to score. I never believed that we had the fastest car by a big margin, as people said. I know that we have a very good car.

“I [also] think our car is working pretty much everywhere and that’s a strength, so no need to be afraid of what’s coming.”

Lewis Hamilton produced an absolute banzai Q3 lap to claim pole position for Sunday's Singapore Grand Prix at Marina Bay.

Though Ferrari went into the session as favourites, it was actually Red Bull that led both Q1 and Q2, but when it mattered most the world champion set a stunning 1m36.015s on his first flying lap which would go unbeaten.

Max Verstappen did all he could but would finish a third of a second down in second with Sebastian Vettel once again left frustrated with his team as he could only manage third, six tenths off the pace.

Valtteri Bottas followed in fourth, just ahead of his countryman Kimi Raikkonen with Daniel Ricciardo completing the top six in his Red Bull.

A very tight midfield battle would see Sergio Perez claim seventh in an upgraded Force India that has been very competitive all weekend.

Romain Grosjean was able to split the two pink panthers in eighth, just 0.045s ahead of Esteban Ocon as Nico Hulkenberg completed the top 10 for Renault.

At the start of Q2, Ferrari attempted to use the Ultrasoft tyre to make it into the top 10, but quickly Raikkonen struggled for grip while Vettel was only 10th.

Hamilton set an impressive time only to be matched by the two Red Bulls with Verstappen just ahead and Ricciardo just behind.

Eventually, both Scuderia drivers went back out on the Hypersoft with Kimi going P1 as his German teammate suffered traffic at the end of his lap but was still P6.

In the scramble to make the top 10 shoot-out, Fernando Alonso and Carlos Sainz would just miss out in P11 and P12 as Ocon and Grosjean produced the goods on their final efforts.

The two Saubers followed as Charles Leclerc survived a brush against the wall in Turn 21 but was only 13th, one place ahead of partner Marcus Ericsson as Pierre Gasly completed the top 15.

In Q1, Hamilton was feeling the pressure as Mercedes opted to use the Ultrasoft tyre rather the Hyper but his best time would be just enough as he made it through in 14th.

Instead, it would be Kevin Magnussen who misjudged the cut-off point as the Haas driver went out in 16th ahead of Brendon Hartley in the Toro Rosso.

Stoffel Vandoorne is still yet to out-qualify teammate Alonso this season as the Belgian sat 18th with the two Williams' of Sergey Sirotkin and Lance Stroll completing the grid.

The full grid for Sunday's race can be seen below:

Lewis Hamilton insists he can't even consider starting to ease off in the Formula 1 title race despite increasing his championship lead at the Singapore GP.

The Mercedes driver eased to a comfortable victory around the streets of Marina Bay as Ferrari and Sebastian Vettel again failed to deliver the expected performance with a bad strategy call leaving him down in third.

It means that with just six races to go, Hamilton has a 40-point lead over the German but he vows not to get ahead of himself.

“We’re really just taking it one race at a time knowing that Ferrari has had quite good pace the last few races,” he said on Sunday.

“Of course it feels great but I’ve been here a long, long time so I know I can’t get ahead of myself, we can’t get ahead of ourselves.

“Still lots of points are available but with this performance and with this focus that we have as a team I truly believe that we can deliver impactful weekends like this for the rest of the season," he added.

“The approach I have is working really well so I don’t see the point in changing, you just need to keep getting better and better.”

With the perception that it is the Scuderia with the faster car over Mercedes, many believe luck has been a big part with errors by Vettel and interference by the weather two key factors.

“I don’t look at it and think ‘we’ve lucked in’,” Hamilton responded. “When Vettel hit the wall the other day, damaged the car and lost running on the track, that’s not us lucking in.

“I take a lot of pride in not putting myself in those positions."

While possibly behind in pure performance, the 33-year-old thinks the Brackley-based team has made up the difference in other ways.

“We haven’t brought any upgrades,” he said. “We brought an upgrade to Monza, we didn’t bring an upgrade here.

“Naturally, we’re always working on our understanding on a technical side to try and improve. For example ride height, a few little things we’re just tweaking and trying to maximise from my understanding of the races.

“I think ultimately we are over-delivering. Our car’s true pace is 100 and we’re pulling out 102," Lewis concluded. "That’s an awesome, feeling.”

Ferrari asserted themselves as the team to beat going into qualifying as Sebastian Vettel set the quickest time in final practice on Saturday.

After his brush against the wall on Friday, the German suffered no lasting effect as he immediately moved ahead of Kimi Raikkonen on his first flying lap and then on his second, set a very impressive 1m36.054s using the Hypersoft tyre.

His Finnish teammate was almost four-tenths back in second with the two Mercedes' on his tail as Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas both set their best times on a second timed lap but were over half a second off the pace of Vettel.

For all the predictions that Red Bull would challenge for victory this weekend, Daniel Ricciardo and Max Verstappen were both over a second slower than the lead Ferrari in fifth and sixth respectively, Verstappen continuing to struggle with apparent engine software problems.

The midfield fight took an unexpected twist as Romain Grosjean led in seventh for Haas with the upgraded Force India's of Esteban Ocon and Sergio Perez in eighth and ninth.

Fernando Alonso also continued his stronger weekend in P10 for McLaren, ahead of the highly fancied Renault's with Nico Hulkenberg 11th and Carlos Sainz 13th.

Toro Rosso appeared to have made progress overnight, running well after the initial runs but eventually, both Pierre Gasly and Brendon Hartley would slip back down the order in 14th and 17th.

Sauber's recent drop in competitiveness also continued though Charles Leclerc was a full second clear of teammate Marcus Ericsson albeit in 16th place.

Meaning the Swiss team is likely to be fighting Toro Rosso, Williams and Stoffel Vandoorne to make it out of Q1 when qualifying begins later.

Full results from Practice 3 can be seen below: