Singapore: Fernando Alonso got the miracle he wanted on Sunday, with Renault’s double world champion winning an incident-packed Singapore Grand Prix against all the odds.

If gremlins conspired against him on Saturday, when a fuel supply problem consigned the Spaniard to 15th place on the starting grid for a race where overtaking was deemed to be almost impossible, the gods of the night smiled on him.

He had said on Saturday he needed a miracle to win and it happened.

“Actually, I was hoping more for rain as you can make up quite a few positions in those conditions,” Alonso told reporters after registering his first victory since winning the Italian Grand Prix for McLaren over a year ago.

“In dry conditions, you can normally only make up one or two positions from where you started or even lose the same number of places.”As the sport’s dramatic first night race unfolded under the floodlights on the Marina Bay Street Circuit, the only rain that fell was on pole sitter Felipe Massa’s parade after the Brazilian suffered a miserable evening of mishaps.

A disastrous pitstop when the safety car had been deployed after a Nelson Piquet crash on the 15th lap took Ferrari’s title contender Massa from first to last.

“It’s a street circuit like Monaco... Corner after corner in a low gear on slippery asphalt. I think on a normal circuit, maybe we can find the potential of the car a little bit better than on a track like here,” Alonso said of the track. (Reuters)

Results

1. Fernando Alonso, Renault 1hr 57min 16.304 secs 2. Nico Rosberg, Williams +00:02.957secs 3. Lewis Hamilton, McLaren 00:05.917 4. Timo Glock, Toyota 00:08.155 5. Sebastian Vettel, Toro Rosso 00:10.268
Note: Giancarlo Fisichella of Force India finished 14th while his teammate Adrian Sutil retired after 12 laps

Standings

Drivers
1. Lewis Hamilton McLaren 84 points 2. Felipe Massa Ferrari 77 3. Robert Kubica BMW Sauber 64 4. Kimi Raikkonen Ferrari 57 5. Nick Heidfeld BMW Sauber 56
Constructors
1. McLaren 135 points 2. Ferrari 134 3. BMW Sauber 120 4. Renault 51 5. Toyota 46