Race winner Sebastian Vettel (2nd right) of Germany and Red Bull Racing celebrates on the podium with second placed Jenson Button (left) of Great Britain and McLaren, third placed Fernando Alonso (right) of Spain and Ferrari and Ole Schack (2nd left)
Singapore, Marina Bay circuit, Sun Sep 23, 2012 – After a tense duel from the red lights to the chequered flag, with two safety car periods, Red Bull driver Sebastian Vettel took his second win of the season in Singapore with a two-stop tyre strategy. Vettel started from third on the grid with the supersoft tyre and then completed two stints on the soft tyre, which had been nominated for the weekend. Vettel’s winning margin was nine seconds over McLaren’s Jenson Button, who adopted the same strategy, pitting four laps later for his first pit stop than Vettel. The race was the longest of the year, running to the two-hour limit two laps before the scheduled 61 laps were completed.
Sebastian Vettel, Winner – “It’s great to get the win today. I’d like to dedicate it to Professor Sid Watkins. It’s thanks to all the work he did to bring safety advancements to the sport that we can race on circuits like this. Looking to the race, Lewis had to retire which is a shame for him. I know how it feels and have been in that position before. I think we could have had a tight battle. I felt very good on the harder tyres and we had a lot of pace. I think it’s very good to get this win here today. We know the next few races will be tough, but that’s the challenge.”
Sebastian Vettel with his specially designed LED flashing helmet in Singapore
The top 10 all started on the supersoft tyre, with Force India’s Nico Hulkenberg and Sauber’s Sergio Perez the highest-placed starters to begin the race on the soft tyre, from 11th and 14th on the grid respectively. Following an incident on the opening lap that dropped him to last, Ferrari’s Felipe Massa also switched to the soft tyres when he was forced to pit on lap one. His team mate Fernando Alonso maintains his championship lead after finishing third in Singapore (from fifth on the grid) also using a two-stop strategy. Alonso’s 81st podium breaks the record previously held by Ayrton Senna.
Sebs new LED helmet
The first driver to pit was Red Bull’s Mark Webber on lap eight, who changed to the softs, while Vettel made his stop for softs two laps later. Button made his first stop on lap 14. Hulkenberg and Perez both pitted on lap 18, putting on soft tyres once more as part of an intended two-stop strategy, which enabled them to have front-running pace on the supersoft at the end of the race. Massa also ended the race on the supersoft, running on his final set for 26 laps, and making up several places in the closing stages to finish eighth, despite at one point running last.
Jenson Button, McLaren Mercedes, 2nd- “It’s nice to be back on the podium – and, if I finish every remaining race in the top one or two, that’ll be perfect. During the first stint, I even thought I had a chance of winning because I was able to go longer than the cars around me. But then they didn’t seem to struggle much on the harder tyre, so the advantage swung away from me. I had a good second stint, but the harder tyre didn’t feel quite as good for me [as the softer tyre]. Then I didn’t really have good balance in the final 10 laps. I still have a slim chance of winning the drivers’ world championship, but I’m just enjoying my racing at the moment. I think our car will be competitive at Suzuka, and we’re doing a very good job as a team too. Of course, it’s disappointing that we had a reliability failure with Lewis’s car, so that’s something we need to solve, particularly as we’re doing such a good job in every other area. If we can solve our reliability issues, we’ll definitely have a chance of fighting for the win in all six remaining races.”
When the first safety car came out on lap 33 all the front-runners came in for their second scheduled pit stop, with Vettel rejoining in the lead on soft tyres in front of Button on the same compound. Their second set of soft tyres was enough to last them for 45 minutes (or 26 laps) until the end of the race as they traded fastest laps.
Fernando Alonso, Ferrari, 3rd – : “In the end it went well, but we definitely can’t go on like this. It can’t always be the case that my closest rival retires, as has happened in the last two races and we can’t think of carrying on to the end of the season with qualifying sessions like yesterday’s, when our performance was almost a second off the best. On track we manage to make the most of what we have, making few or no mistakes, thanks to great work from the team: for that alone we deserve to be where we are in the classification. Today, we pulled out an advantage over three of our four main competitors, which is positive. Probably this has been the most difficult circuit for us: we will find partially similar characteristics in Korea and Abu Dhabi, but I hope that by the time we get there, we will have found a way of improving the car. The start was definitely not one of my best of the season, but luckily I managed to take back my position from Di Resta immediately. At my first pit stop I immediately ran into traffic, but I had felt the tyres were beginning to degrade too much, so we opted to pit. On the Softs, we were more competitive, but then, after the second stop, the Safety Car came out, which favoured Button and Vettel. Just before the restart, the two leaders nearly collided and I lost a few metres because I was changing settings on the steering wheel. At that point, we didn’t know yet whether we would need to stop again, but when the second neutralisation came and some drivers pitted, then we decided to stay out, even if we weren’t sure if we would suffer with tyre degradation in the final stages, but that wasn’t the case and we made it comfortably to the podium. It was a very tough race physically, definitely the most tiring of the whole season: three hundred odd kilometres in this heat and such high humidity is very stressful.”
A second safety car period from lap 40 enabled Perez to make his second pit stop of the day without any significant loss of track position, and he finished 11th after choosing to start on the soft tyre. Hulkenberg also stopped during the second safety car period, but his chances of using strategy to gain position were ruined when he was forced into an extra pit stop following an on-track incident, making him a three-stopper in the end.
With a significant time difference of around 1.5 seconds between the two compounds – the biggest we are likely to see all year – and a performance crossover point of approximately 10 laps, driving style played a significant part in tyre management, particularly at the beginning of the race when the cars were very heavy on fuel. With no safety cars in the first half of the race, the teams had to remain flexible with their tactics and so we saw a very wide mix of strategies as they kept their options open.
Once the safety car did come out, it dictated the strategy to some extent, as the drivers who had stopped for the second time needed to manage their tyres all the way to the end, although they were definitely helped by the second safety car period.
Michael Schumacher, Mercedes-DNF, “It was obviously a very unfortunate ending to my race this evening when I ran into the car of Vergne who accepted my apology straight afterwards. I am not totally sure why it happened like this; I was braking but the deceleration was not as strong as it usually would be, and I could not avoid running into the car in front of me. We have to find out what has happened. Up until then, I think it would have been possible to get some points this evening.”
Lewis Hamilton, McLaren Mercedes DNF– “It’s heart-breaking not to have finished the race today. We definitely had the pace to win this weekend. In fact, before I retired, I was cruising; just managing the gap back to Seb [Vettel]. Then I started to experience difficulty with the gearshift, then I lost third gear, and then the ’box kept dropping into neutral. Obviously, I was disappointed, but the good thing we can take away from this weekend is that we have extremely good pace. As a result, I think we can really attack in the next few races. It’s going to be hard to close the gap to guys like Fernando [Alonso] and Sebastian [Vettel], especially when they keep finishing race after race, but I’ll never give up. There are six more races, and I need to go and win all six. I’ll fight until the end.”
