You’re messing with my electrics, man!

Red Bull believe Mark Webber’s Singapore Grand Prix may have been ended to a tram. The Australian was on course for a podium finish when he had to be rolled into the garage with transmission problems - his first mechanical retirement of the season.

Webber was forced into the pits with a broken gearbox after his car decided it would be funny to drive in fifth and seventh at the same time. The team are now working on the assumption that the problems were caused by static electricity from a nearby tram. Team principal Christian Horner told Autosport:

 ”At Turn 13 the gearbox selected two gears at one. The moog valve controlling the gearshift had been triggered into changing to seventh while he was still in fifth. Yet after interrogating the software we can see that it at no time was allowing for this. We can see a momentary electrical surge at the precise moment, which seems to have triggered the moog valve.

“It was exactly what [Toro Rosso] suffered from with (Sebastien) Bourdais in Friday practice, at exactly the same place. A tram line runs beneath the track at that corner and it seems as if static from a passing tram at the very moment Mark was in the corner passed through the ground.”