With Hamilton 30 points ahead of Vettel in the drivers’ championship standings, the Mercedes driver knows he will leave Singapore ahead of his Ferrari rival no matter what, but on the tight and twisty streets of the Marina Bay Circuit he stands a great chance of extending hit lead in the race to a fifth world title.
But Verstappen could easily upset the party on a track that favours the Red Bull, although he heads into the start of the race with concerns over how long his Renault engine will last after gremlins emerged during practice. Vettel, starting in third, has Hamilton’s teammate Valtteri Bottas alongside him, while Kimi Raikkonen is joined by Daniel Ricciardo on the third row.
That's all from our coverage of the Singapore Grand Prix. Stayed tuned on Independent Sport for all the latest reaction, as Lewis Hamilton takes another giant stride towards a fifth world championship.
The F1 circus moves on to the Russian Grand Prix in Sochi in two weeks' time, with just six races left this season for Sebastian Vettel to haul in the runaway championship leader.
Yeah it’s true, overall we were not fast enough, we didn’t have the pace in the race. But we tried to be aggressive at the beginning and it didn’t work out. After that I was on a different tyre and just lost too much time."
On the 40-point deficit to Hamilton:
"It doesn’t help. Obviously I'm thinking about today's race and the way we race we didn’t have a chance. There might be something else in that we weren't quick enough but I said before the weekend that we can only beat ourselves and we haven’t got the most out of our package."
"It was not bad, shame for the first lap but you could see we missed top speed. We got back into second with good strategy though and tried to chase down Lewis, but he had too much."
On his car troubles:
"It was not a perfect getaway but behind the safety car I was bogging down and missing gears. But a good result."
"I'm spent. That was a tough race. I've got such great support here and we had a great start, the team have just never given up believe and faith in myself and in Valtteri, That was just such a long race, one of the toughest of my career and I'm glad it's over. But what a race, what a weekend.
On getting through the backmarkers:
"I think I was a bit unlucky with the traffic and these guys were moving around and were difficult to follow. Max got a bit lucky but eventually I got through it and built the gap back.
On Ferrari:
"They put up a great fight this weekend but I'm not sure where their pace disappeared to."
Lap 59: Ricciardo's been held up slightly by Sirotkin as the trio lapped him for what feels like the 100th time, and that leaves a two-horse race for fourth.
Lap 58: The front three looks to be sorted here as Hamilton's lead is out to 6.6s, and Vettel - supposedly in the fastest car - is a whopping 23s behind Verstappen. The battle is still very much on for fourth though.
Bottas continues his tirade against Hulkenberg, who to be fair to him is a long way ahead of the Mercedes. Ricciardo's coming back into this, and he could yet figure in the closing stages here.
Lap 55: Bottas is calling for more blue flags, and is clearly feeling the heat. One positive for him though is that Ricciardohas dropped three seconds behind and has to do all of that work to catch the pair up again.
Lap 52: It's spicing up here, ad Raikkonen is onto the back of Bottas and Ricciardo has caught the pair of them! Meanwhile Verstappen is catching Hamilton out in front and the lead is down to three seconds.
Lap 48: Sirotkin gets a five-second time penalty for his move on Hartley and he serves it immediately as he pits for fresh tyres that leaves him in last and a whopping 36-seconds adrift. With Stroll in 15th, it's another race weekend to forget for Williams.
Lap 47: Perez gets past - you guessed it - Sirotkin for the third time today, and finally he's under investigation after driving Hartley off the road as he tried to pass.
