Sebastian Vettel took victory in the Singapore GP with championship leader Fernando Alonso finishing third.
Lewis Hamilton, who started in pole position, was forced to retire due to a gearbox failure, and pretty much ending his hopes of catching up with leader Alonso.
Hamilton's McLaren teammate Jenson Button took second, but is well off the championship pace to trouble Alonso or Vettel, who is now only 29 points behind the Ferrari driver.
"It (championship chances) looks better than before," Vettel said. "Fernando finished third. I am not a genius but I think it's looking ten points better than it was before. There's a lot of races left and it's a bit difficult to predict what's going to happen.
"We have to make sure that we finish the races first of all. I think the pace is there, even if we are not quick enough to win then it is good enough to collect a lot of points. And we have to make sure we do that. It's a tough championship so far but we're still in it.
"We're still looking forward to the next couple of races, and obviously the target at the moment is to beat Fernando."
Alonso leads the pack with 194 points, while Vettel is second on 165. Kimi Raikkonen is third with 149, while Hamilton stays on 142 points. Alonso was delighted to pick up 15 points in a weekend where Ferrari were far from their best. "I think we were not very competitive this weekend so we struggled a little with the pace of the car and yesterday we managed to put a good lap in Q3 and that was a little bit the best part of the weekend," he said.
"Because if you start at the rear I think you are having problems all the race, so starting in fifth, it was okay. Then the start was so-so. We lost position with (Paul) Di Resta and then we recovered in first and second corner, and then we fight a little bit with (Pastor) Maldonado so I think the safety car arrived in the worst moment for us because we have stopped and changed the tyres five laps before the safety car, so we didn't have the pitstop for free like the others did.
"So, it was, I think with all these difficulties, if we put altogether, arriving third in our difficult weekend is for sure a fantastic result in terms of points."
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