2013 Singapore Grand Prix

Lore & Background

Sebastian Vettel took his most dominant victory statistically. He took pole position, led every lap, scored the fastest lap, and won by more than 32.6 seconds; his third Grand Slam. With a nearly perfect start and good handling of the safety car situation, Fernando Alonso took second position from seventh on the grid. Räikkönen, despite a back injury and a start from 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 teammate 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 Pérez, Nico Hülkenberg and Adrian Sutil picking up the final points places. The results meant that Vettel again increased his championship lead to 60 points over Fernando Alonso with Lewis Hamilton a further 36 points behind and Kimi Räikkönen two behind Hamilton's total.

Reader's Guide

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. Pirelli stated that their supersoft tyres are two seconds faster per lap than 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.

Did You Know?

• The safety car was used in every Singapore Grand Prix up to and including 2013.
• Mark Webber and Paul di Resta failed to finish the race but were classified as they completed over 90% of the race.