Monday, 18 September 2017:

Always a bridesmaid, never the bride is Daniel Ricciardo at the Singapore Grand Prix.

The Australian has again rued his Red Bull's lack of pace after being runner-up for the third-straight time at Marina Bay in Sunday's incident-packed race.

It was his fourth podium there in a row, falling to championship leader Lewis Hamilton, with the Briton's Mercedes teammate Valtteri Bottas third.

Ricciardo qualified third ahead of fifth-starter Hamilton, who took the lead on the opening lap when pole-sitter Sebastian Vettel took out Max Verstappen and Kimi Raikkonen in a first corner crash.

Ricciardo vented his frustration on the podium after not having the race-day pace to match Hamilton.

"I can't win the bloody thing. I'm trying, I'm trying," Ricciardo lamented.

"Today we didn't have the Friday pace we showed in practice and I'm a little bit disappointed to miss out on a win but have to be happy to get another podium.

"We struggled to look after the tyres and it felt like when I could punch out a good lap time, I couldn't really maintain it, whereas Lewis could answer and answer again.

"So it felt like every time we tried to match his pace it would take more out of (my) tyres."

It's a common theme for the 28-year-old, who believes he'd challenge Hamilton and second-ranked Vettell of Ferrari in the championship race had he a faster car.

After the race, Red Bull team principal Christian Horner revealed Ricciardo also had a gearbox issue.

"Daniel started to lose an awful lot of gearbox oil, which created a lot of problems with oil pressure, and we were feeling that it was looking unlikely that Daniel would get to the end of the race," Horner said.

Vettell lost ground on Hamilton in the championship standings due to the early incident which caused damage race-ending damage to Fernando Alonso's McLaren.

Slow off the line, Vettel moved to his left to cover Red Bull's Verstappen but pushed him into Raikkonen, who had got off to a flying start and was passing the Dutchman.

The crash ended all their evenings.

The first lap incident left Verstappen, who has now had seven retirements this season, unimpressed with Vettel.

"If you are fighting for the title you shouldn't take those risks," Verstappen said.

"It wasn't very clever."

Stewards summoned Vettel, Raikkonen and Verstappen to a meeting after the race but no driver was deemed responsible and no further action was taken.

The win extended Hamilton's lead in the driver's championship to 28 points over Vettel with six races to go.

"It couldn't be a more perfect scenario," Hamilton said.

"I definitely went in today thinking it was about damage limitation. To come out of it in the other direction is a shock."

Ricciardo maintains fourth in the standings, 99 points behind the leader with six races remaining.

AAP