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Daniel Ricciardo's hopes of overhauling Red Bull Formula 1 team-mate Sebastian Vettel in the Singapore Grand Prix were hindered by a battery problem on his car.

The Australian remains an outside contender for the 2014 F1 championship, but did not quite have the pace to beat Vettel to the runner-up spot behind Lewis Hamilton on Sunday.

Ricciardo was hamstrung throughout by a battery problem that hit him initially at the first corner and then returned later on.

Team principal Christian Horner said: "He had a problem on the run down to Turn 1 at the start. Then again, probably before half-distance, we had an issue with the battery which would not discharge.

"It required quite a lot of management to try to help him out and the problem was intermittent. On some laps he would lose three or four tenths, on some laps it would be nothing."

Ricciardo was unsure how much better he would have gone without the problem, and said it was strange the issue could not be solved.

"The power was coming and going and, from the safety car onwards, it was pretty consistently down on power," he explained.

"Coming up through gears, I would get a bit of power and then it would drop and then it would come again.

"We definitely had a few issues and we tried fixing them but to be honest we didn't quite clear it all up.

"I guess it did cost us a bit today but obviously we still got it to the end.

"Normally, if we have those glitches after a couple of laps we clear it but this one pretty much carried through all race.

"I guess I was a bit frustrated, a bit concerned as well that we wouldn't get it to the flag. But luckily it held on."