F1: Ten Glorious Years of Singapore Grand Prix

#5 2012: Vettel’s Championship Surge

Clean Start involving Pastor Maldonado

The grid mourned for the death of Eric Sidney Watkins, who was famously called as Professor Sid, the man who played crucial roles in F1’s safety and medical aspects, and the race winner fittingly dedicated the victory to Professor Sid.

The pole-sitter Hamilton got a good head away, but a mechanical failure ended his race prematurely, and even his championship fight. Pastor Maldonado, who started in second, slipped to fourth, as Button and Alonso surged ahead of him in the first lap, perhaps the Lotus driver took Hamilton’s previous day advise of a clean start, pretty serious.

When a crash involving Narain Karthikeyan's HRT brought out the safety car in lap 33, Maldonado dropped further down the order after pitting to change tires, even though he did his second pit stop just four laps before, alongside Alonso.

The Venezuelan retired even before the safety car returned into the pits, because of a hydraulics problem.

The re-start was on lap 39, but it was momentary as Michael Schumacher reared Jean-Eric Vergne, who was battling for position with Sauber's Sergio Perez.

Michael Schumacher rear-ending

Jean Eric

Vergne

Incidentally, he had crashed into the back of Perez previous year and reared into Bruno Senna in the season’s Spanish Grand Prix earlier.

The crash with the Toro Rosso driver earned him a 10-place grid penalty for the following race at Suzuka.

After the second safety car, the race restarted at lap 42, and it was pretty clear that the full 61 laps could not be completed within the two hours time, and eventually, the race was completed at lap 59. The period between saw Massa making a scintillating move on Bruno Senna.

Sebastian Vettel had a measure of Jenson Button, and Fernando Alonso nursed his tires to hold Force India's Paul di Resta who finished fourth, securing a career-best finishing position. Alonso left Singapore still with 29 points lead in the championship battle.