2013 Singapore Grand Prix

2013 Singapore Grand Prix
Race 13 of 19 in the 2013 Formula One World Championship
Marina Bay Street Circuit
Race details
Date	22 September 2013
Official name	2013 Formula 1 SingTel Singapore Grand Prix
Location	Marina Bay Street Circuit Marina Bay, Singapore
Course	Street circuit
Course length	5.065 km (3.148 miles)
Distance	61 laps, 308.965 km (192.023 miles)
Weather	Dry and 29 degrees
Pole position
Driver	Sebastian Vettel	Red Bull-Renault
Time	1:42.841
Fastest lap
Driver	Sebastian Vettel	Red Bull-Renault
Time	1:48.574 on lap 46
Podium
First	Sebastian Vettel	Red Bull-Renault
Second	Fernando Alonso	Ferrari
Third	Kimi Räikkönen	Lotus-Renault
Lap leaders

The 2013 Singapore Grand Prix (formally known as the 2013 Formula 1 SingTel Singapore Grand Prix) was a Formula One motor race that was held on 22 September 2013 at the Marina Bay Street Circuit in Marina Bay, Singapore. The race was the thirteenth round of the 2013 season, and marked the 14th running of the Singapore Grand Prix.

Sebastian Vettel produced one of his most dominating performance. He took pole position, led every lap, scored fastest lap, and won by more than 30 seconds. With nearly perfect start and handling of safety car situation, Alonso took second position from 7th on the grid. Raikkonen, despite injury in the back and qualified only 13th, climbed up to the final podium position. Nico Rosberg, who started on the front row alongside Vettel, was caught out by a failed tyre strategy to finish fourth while British team-mate Lewis Hamilton followed him home for 5th place. Felipe Massa took sixth, over a minute behind the race winner while Jenson Button slipped down the order in the last few laps to finish seventh with Sergio Perez, Nico Hulkenberg and Adrian Sutil picking up the final points places.

Background

The circuit layout was revised for the 2013 race, with the removal of the "Singapore Sling" chicane at Turn 10. The corner was condensed down to a single change in direction, with the large kerbs that had been used to mark the chicane removed entirely.

Tyre supplier Pirelli brought its white-banded medium compound tyre as the harder "prime" tyre and the red-banded supersoft compound tyre as the softer "option" tyre, as opposed to the previous year where soft and supersoft selection were provided.

Qualifying

Pirelli stated that their supersoft tyres are two seconds faster per lap then their medium compound, which meant that the teams had to establish a good tyre strategy for the weekend. Reigning triple world champion Sebastian Vettel took command in the final two practice sessions, while Lewis Hamilton was the fastest man in the first session. Hamilton's teammate Nico Rosberg and Romain Grosjean were also strong contenders for pole position.

Q1

The two Red Bull drivers and Grosjean successfully qualified for the next session with the medium compound tyres, leaving their three sets of supersofts unused for the following two sessions. The two drivers from Caterham and Marussia as well as Pastor Maldonado and Paul di Resta were eliminated during this session.

Q2

The biggest surprise of Q2 was the elimination of Lotus's Kimi Räikkönen. It was later revealed that the Finn suffered from a trapped nerve in his lower back on a quite bumpy circuit. Sauber's Esteban Gutiérrez qualified for Q3 for the first time in his young Formula One career. His teammate Nico Hülkenberg was on pace for a Q3 appearance as well, but the German suffered a DRS issue during his final flying lap, resulting in a Q2 exit. It was the first time this season that Hülkenberg could not out-qualify his teammate. Interestingly, both Mercedes drivers qualified for Q3 on the set of supersofts they previously used in Q1, which means that they joined Vettel, Grosjean and Mark Webber as the drivers who still had two sets of new supersoft tyres for Q3.

Q3

The five drivers with two unused sets of supersoft tyres went out on track early in the session for a first flying lap. Vettel was by far the fastest man of that group, lapping in 1:42.841, more than six tenths of a second faster than Rosberg. As a result, the defending world champion elected to stay in the pits, while the others all went on track, either for a first or a second flying lap, except Esteban Gutiérrez, who opted to save his tyres for the race. What seemed to be a guaranteed pole position for Vettel proved to be very uncertain as the German watched Webber posting the fastest first sector time, quickly followed by successive fastest second sector times by Rosberg and Grosjean. Vettel's time still stood by less than a tenth, ahead of Rosberg and Grosjean. Webber took fourth in front of Hamilton. The Ferrari duo could only manage sixth and seventh, with Felipe Massa in front of Fernando Alonso. Jenson Button had to settle for eighth, while the impressive Daniel Ricciardo posted yet another Q3 appearance with ninth. Gutiérrez started in tenth place after not posting a lap time to save his tyres for the race.

Race

Sebastian Vettel started from pole ahead of Nico Rosberg with Adrian Sutil the only driver starting on the Medium compound 'Prime' tyre.

Rosberg got a better start than Vettel into the first corner but ran wide allowing Vettel back through. Fernando Alonso who started 7th got a brilliant start to move up to 3rd. Vettel gained a 5 second advantage over Rosberg in the first 3 laps and continued to pull away as Rosberg also pulled away from Alonso. Mark Webber overtook Romain Grosjean early on using DRS to move back up to 4th. Lewis Hamilton had a bad start falling behind both Ferraris. He overtook Massa back soon after but the move was deemd to be an illegal overtake by the stewards as he did it off the track meaning he had to give the position back. After the first few laps Vettel led from Rosberg, Alonso, Webber, Grosjean, Massa, Hamilton, Button, Hulkenberg and Perez.

Kimi Räikkönen who started 13th and had a bad back quickly moved up the order overtaking Esteban Gutiérrez and Daniel Ricciardo who both started in the top 10. Webber chased down Alonso before being instructued to stay around 2 seconds behind Alonso so he wouldn't over heat his tyres or engine.

The race was then mostly uneventful as Vettel extended his lead to around 7 seconds before Räikkönen became the first driver to stop on lap 11. This sparked a chain reaction showing the tyres hadn't lasted as long as expected. Hamilton jumped Massa in this 1st set of stops. Paul di Resta kept going until lap 21 before stopping to change his worn option tyres and in doing so slowed down Alonso and allowed Webber, Grosjean and Rosberg to bunch up behind Alonso.

Räikkönen used his early stop to move into the points ahead of Hulkenberg, Perez and Button but at the front Vettel stretched out the lead even further to over 10 seconds until Ricciardo, Vettel's Red Bull team-mate for 2014, crashed under the grandstand bringing out the safety car. This meant that the safety car had been used in every Singapore Grand Prix.

Classification

Qualifying

Pos.	No.	Driver	Constructor	Q1	Q2	Q3	Grid
1	1	Sebastian Vettel	Red Bull-Renault	1:45.376	1:42.905	1:42.841	1
2	9	Nico Rosberg	Mercedes	1:45.208	1:43.892	1:42.932	2
3	8	Romain Grosjean	Lotus-Renault	1:45.851	1:43.957	1:43.058	3
4	2	Mark Webber	Red Bull-Renault	1:45.271	1:43.272	1:43.152	4
5	10	Lewis Hamilton	Mercedes	1:44.196	1:43.920	1:43.254	5
6	4	Felipe Massa	Ferrari	1:45.658	1:44.376	1:43.890	6
7	3	Fernando Alonso	Ferrari	1:45.115	1:44.153	1:43.938	7
8	5	Jenson Button	McLaren-Mercedes	1:45.009	1:44.497	1:44.282	8
9	19	Daniel Ricciardo	Toro Rosso-Ferrari	1:45.379	1:44.407	1:44.439	9
10	12	Esteban Gutiérrez	Sauber-Ferrari	1:45.483	1:44.245	no time	10
11	11	Nico Hülkenberg	Sauber-Ferrari	1:45.381	1:44.555		11
12	18	Jean-Éric Vergne	Toro Rosso-Ferrari	1:45.657	1:44.588		12
13	7	Kimi Räikkönen	Lotus-Renault	1:45.522	1:45.658		13
14	6	Sergio Pérez	McLaren-Mercedes	1:45.164	1:44.752		14
15	15	Adrian Sutil	Force India-Mercedes	1:45.960	1:45.185		15
16	17	Valtteri Bottas	Williams-Renault	1:45.982	1:45.388		16
17	14	Paul di Resta	Force India-Mercedes	1:46.121			17
18	16	Pastor Maldonado	Williams-Renault	1:46.619			18
19	20	Charles Pic	Caterham-Renault	1:48.111			19
20	21	Giedo van der Garde	Caterham-Renault	1:48.320			20
21	22	Jules Bianchi	Marussia-Cosworth	1:48.830			21
22	23	Max Chilton	Marussia-Cosworth	1:48.930			22
107% time:1:51.489
Source:

Race

Pos.	No.	Driver	Constructor	Laps	Time/Retired	Grid	Points
1	1	Sebastian Vettel	Red Bull-Renault	61	1:59:13.132	1	25
2	3	Fernando Alonso	Ferrari	61	+32.627	7	18
3	7	Kimi Räikkönen	Lotus-Renault	61	+43.920	13	15
4	9	Nico Rosberg	Mercedes	61	+51.155	2	12
5	10	Lewis Hamilton	Mercedes	61	+53.159	5	10
6	4	Felipe Massa	Ferrari	61	+1:03.877	6	8
7	5	Jenson Button	McLaren-Mercedes	61	+1:23.354	8	6
8	6	Sergio Pérez	McLaren-Mercedes	61	+1:23.820	14	4
9	11	Nico Hülkenberg	Sauber-Ferrari	61	+1:24.261	11	2
10	15	Adrian Sutil	Force India-Mercedes	61	+1:24.688	15	1
11	16	Pastor Maldonado	Williams-Renault	61	+1:28.479	18
12	12	Esteban Gutiérrez	Sauber-Ferrari	61	+1:37.894	10
13	17	Valtteri Bottas	Williams-Renault	61	+1:45.161	16
14	18	Jean-Éric Vergne	Toro Rosso-Ferrari	61	+1:53.512	12
15	2	Mark Webber	Red Bull-Renault	60	Gearbox/Water Pressure1	4
16	21	Giedo van der Garde	Caterham-Renault	60	+1 lap	20
17	23	Max Chilton	Marussia-Cosworth	60	+1 lap	22
18	22	Jules Bianchi	Marussia-Cosworth	60	+1 lap	21
19	20	Charles Pic	Caterham-Renault	60	+1 lap	19
20	14	Paul di Resta	Force India-Mercedes	54	Accident	17
Ret	8	Romain Grosjean	Lotus-Renault	37	Pneumatics	3
Ret	19	Daniel Ricciardo	Toro Rosso-Ferrari	23	Accident	9
Source:

Notes

• ^1  — Mark Webber failed to finish the race due to problems with gearbox and water pressure and retired on final lap but was classified as he completed over 90% of the race.

Standings after the race

Drivers' Championship standings

	Pos.	Driver	Points
	1	Sebastian Vettel	247
	2	Fernando Alonso	187
	3	Lewis Hamilton	151
	4	Kimi Räikkönen	149
	5	Mark Webber	130

Constructors' Championship standings

	Pos.	Constructor	Points
	1	Red Bull-Renault	377
	2	Ferrari	274
	3	Mercedes	267
	4	Lotus-Renault	206
	5	McLaren-Mercedes	76

• Note: Only the top five positions are included for both sets of standings.