The 2013 Malaysian Grand Prix (officially the 2013 Formula 1 Petronas Malaysia Grand Prix) was a Formula One motor race held at the Sepang International Circuit in Sepang, Selangor on 24 March 2013 before 90,000 people. It was the second round of the 2013 Formula One World Championship, and the 15th Formula One race held in Malaysia. Red Bull driver Sebastian Vettel won the 56-lap race from pole position. His teammate Mark Webber finished second, and Lewis Hamilton was third for the Mercedes team.
Kimi Räikkönen was leading the World Drivers' Championship after winning the season-opening and Ferrari led the World Constructors' Championship. The race began on a damp track after an earlier downpour, with Vettel in pole position alongside Felipe Massa of Ferrari; Massa's teammate Fernando Alonso, and Hamilton began from third and fourth. Webber moved from fifth to second by the second lap, and took the lead after Vettel made his first pit stop for dry slick tyres on lap five. He maintained that position through most of the race until Vettel ignored a team order from Red Bull to lower the performance of his engine, overtaking Webber for the lead on the 46th lap. Vettel maintained the lead for the final nine laps for his first victory of the season and the 27th of his career. Hamilton finished 12 seconds behind, and his teammate Nico Rosberg was told by Mercedes team principal Ross Brawn to hold fourth place.
Vettel apologised to the Red Bull team and Webber for ignoring the order to hold position; Red Bull did not punish or reprimand him because his attorneys threatened legal action, and he recanted the apology three weeks later. Webber was asked to present his version of events to Red Bull founder and co-owner Dietrich Mateschitz. Vettel's victory placed him in the lead of the World Drivers' Championship that he would not relinquish for the rest of the season, after Lotus driver Räikkönen finished seventh. Red Bull took the lead of the World Constructors' Championship from Ferrari, with 17 races left in the season.
Background
The 2013 Malaysian Grand Prix was the 2nd of the 19 rounds of the 2013 Formula One World Championship, and the 15th Formula One Malaysian race. It was held at the 15-turn Sepang International Circuit in Sepang, Selangor on 24 March. A Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA, motorsport's governing body)-sanctioned race has been held in Malaysia since the 1960s, with the first editions run in Singapore—then part of the Malaysian Federation—before moving to the Shah Alam Circuit. With the arrival of Formula One in 1999, the race was moved to the purpose-built Sepang International Circuit, where all editions were held until 2017.
Tyre supplier Pirelli brought white-banded, medium compound tyres; red-banded, hard compound dry tyres; green-banded, intermediate compound tyres; and dark-blue-banded wet-weather tyres to the race. The drag reduction system (DRS), an adjustable flap at the back of each car that helps with overtaking when activated, had two activation zones for the race: one on the straight, linking turns 14 and 15, and another on the straight between the final and first corners. For the race, a debris fence on the pit lane wall was extended to better safeguard track marshals. There were 11 teams (each representing a different constructor) that each entered two race drivers, with no changes from the season entry list.
After winning the season-opening one week earlier, Lotus driver Kimi Räikkönen led the World Drivers' Championship with 25 championship points, ahead of Ferrari's Fernando Alonso and Red Bull's Sebastian Vettel in second and third, with 18 and 15 championship points. Alonso's teammate Felipe Massa was fourth with 12 championship points, and Mercedes driver Lewis Hamilton was fifth with ten championship points. Ferrari led the World Constructors' Championship with 30 championship points; Lotus and Red Bull followed with 26 and 23 championship points, respectively. Mercedes and Force India held fourth place, with ten championship points each.
Vettel said that the Australian Grand Prix would be meaningless later in the year, and predicted that with the different conditions and tyres in Malaysia, he would outpace Ferrari and Lotus. His teammate, Mark Webber, explained that Red Bull required an improvement in car performance for the race: "As a team we weren't as strong as we thought we'd be. But that's Formula One – it can change very quickly. We've got a very, very hot track this week in Sepang. So let's see how we go for the next few races. It's the first marker in the sand." Hamilton said that Mercedes would bring what they learnt about team strategy from Melbourne to Sepang, and would have good results if his team then scored ten points.
For the second consecutive race, reliability issues with the telemetry link between race control and the cars prompted the FIA to disable the system, stopping teams from informing drivers of an incident or being lapped, and the FIA could not disable DRS in inclement weather or a safety car. The stewards advised drivers to comply with DRS usage rules, and required teams to inform them when the system was disabled. If officials deployed the safety car, drivers were ordered to manually press a button on their steering wheel to slow their cars as soon as they noticed a warning board or an illuminated light. Drivers acquainted themselves with the revised procedures in a test held after the third practice session.
Several teams made changes to their cars for the race. Sauber introduced a new C32 chassis for driver Nico Hülkenberg after a fuel-system fault prevented him from starting the Australian Grand Prix. Sauber modified the C32's engine cover to remove hot air from its engine and sidepods, and added a small vertical fin to improve airflow to the car's rear and diffuser's side channels. Red Bull installed extra cooling outlets on the centre of the RB9, to counter Malaysia's warm climate. Ferrari opened the exhausts on the F138 to improve the extraction of warm air from its sidepods. Mercedes changed the turning vanes and pillars under the F1 W04. Lotus introduced a new exhaust system on Räikkönen's E21 car and its endplate, main plane and revised upper flap, in addition to a revised diffuser with a gurney flap.
Practice
In accordance with the 2013 regulations, three practice sessions were held: two 90-minute sessions on Friday, and another 60-minute session on Saturday. The first practice session was held in hot, humid weather; no driver set a competitive lap time for 34 minutes. Several drivers remained in the pit lane to wait for better track conditions to record their quickest times in a ten-minute period of successive laps, before running a heavy fuel load. Webber's first timed lap (1:37.588) was followed by a 1:37.354 from his teammate Vettel. Webber improved to a 1:36.395 lap to go fastest. Räikkönen missed the first 55 minutes as Lotus replaced a kinetic energy recovery system (KERS) battery which failed due to a sensor problem, but was second-fastest. Vettel, Alonso, Nico Rosberg of Mercedes, Adrian Sutil of Force India, Massa, Paul di Resta, Hamilton and Lotus driver Romain Grosjean were second to tenth. Sutil damaged his front wing on a kerb, and Sauber's Esteban Gutiérrez spun at turn 14.
The second session was also hot and humid; many teams used dry tyres early, due to rain clouds above the track. A heavy rain shower fell, preventing an improvement in lap times; some drivers drove on the wet track on the intermediate-compound tyres, to acclimatise themselves with the conditions if inclement weather returned later in the week. Räikkönen lapped fastest at 1:36.569, followed by Vettel, Massa and Alonso, Webber, Grosjean, Rosberg, Di Resta, Hamilton and Sutil. Some drivers went off the track during the session, due to wetness. Gutiérrez's in-car fire extinguisher activated after mounting the turn-12 kerb, and a subsequent exhaust-system fracture ended his session.
In the final session (also in hot, humid weather), most drivers used hard-compound tyres to see how they would behave during the race, then switched to medium-compound tyres when track grip improved. Räikkönen set a benchmark in the first ten minutes, which Rosberg and Sutil bettered. Rosberg and his teammate, Hamilton, fought for the fastest lap time until Vettel used the medium-compound tyres to lead with a 1:36.435 lap with three minutes to go. Hamilton, Sutil, Webber, Räikkönen, Di Resta, McLaren's Jenson Button, Massa, Rosberg and Alonso were the ten fastest drivers. Near the end of the session, Hamilton's right-front tyre tore a tread after locking the wheel and flat-spotting it to the canvas. Part of the tyre detached on the backstraight, and damaged Hamilton's front wing.
Qualifying
Saturday afternoon's qualifying session was divided into three parts. The first session lasted 18 minutes, eliminating cars which finished the session 17th or below. The 107% rule was in effect, requiring drivers to reach a time within 107 per cent of the fastest lap to qualify. The second session lasted 15 minutes, eliminating cars that finished 11th to 16th. The final, ten-minute session determined pole position to tenth place. Drivers who progressed to the final session were not allowed to change tyres for the race's start, and used the tyres with which they set their fastest lap times. A sudden downpour five minutes before the end of the second session wet the track from turns five to six, prompting the drivers to switch to intermediate-compound tyres during the session and wet-weather affected the final session. Vettel used a single set of medium-compound tyres in the first and second sessions to prevent tyre overuse. He also used intermediate-compound tyres in the final minutes of the third session to take his second pole position of the season and the 38th of his career with a 1:49.674 lap. Massa started second for the first time since the 2010 Bahrain Grand Prix. and was faster than his teammate, Alonso (in third), for the fourth race in a row. Hamilton used an older set of intermediate tyres in Mercedes' strategy to remain on the circuit, and qualified fourth. Webber took fifth on one set of intermediate tyres; a pit-wall miscommunication at the end of the final session allowed Hamilton past and stopped Webber improving.
Rosberg was fastest in the first session, but fell to sixth in the final session on a used set of intermediate tyres. Räikkönen took seventh on a new set of intermediate tyres. A slow pace put Button eighth, an oversteer in the corners left Sutil ninth, and McLaren's Sergio Pérez was tenth. Grosjean, 11th, drove onto the track too late. Hülkenberg, 12th, could not switch from a set of worn medium-compound tyres due to a loss of weather data. A car-balance adjustment put Toro Rosso's Daniel Ricciardo 13th. The rain caught out Gutiérrez in 14th on dry tyres. Di Resta aborted a timed lap due to the rain, prompting Force India to call him to the pit lane for a tyre change. He took 15th, rejoining the track when the rain fell and making two errors. Williams driver Pastor Maldonado, in 16th, set no lap time; he aborted when the rain began. Jean-Éric Vergne's Toro Rosso, 17th, failed to advance beyond the first session after a slower car obstructed him on his lap. Williams' Valtteri Bottas lapped 18th fastest due to poor grip from the medium-compound tyre. Marussia's Jules Bianchi and Max Chilton were 19th and 21st, separated by Charles Pic's Caterham, who had an understeer on his first lap that a pressure adjustment for his second did not remove. Giedo van der Garde, 22nd, was slowed by an oversteer on the medium-compound tyres.
Post-qualifying After qualifying, the stewards imposed a three-place grid penalty on Räikkönen after concluding he blocked Rosberg between turns 12 and 15 in the third session. This moved Button to seventh, Sutil to eighth and Pérez to ninth.
Qualifying classification