2013 Singapore Grand Prix lap times and fastest laps

15 comments on “2013 Singapore Grand Prix lap times and fastest laps”

1. 

   Patrick (@paeschli)
   22nd September 2013, 21:28

   “They opened up a big gap at the beginning which we know Sebastian can. You then look at the pace of Rosberg, it wasn’t that far off in the first stint.”
   Yeah, because Vettel started to save his tyres after the first three laps: he lapped the circuit 2 seconds faster than everyone else, including his teammate. That’s massively impressive!
   1. 

      Commendatore (@commendatore)
      22nd September 2013, 22:11

      Vettel just can’t be 2 sec faster than his teammate in the “same” car!

      Remember the disgusting frontwing incident in RBR? Ow, how I hated them and their hypocrisy! I think there’s something fishy going on in RBR, well for the last 5 years straight!

      But, it seems they’ll get away with it this time as well… sadly.
      1. 

         Sri Harsha (@harsha)
         23rd September 2013, 3:56

         Fishy is going on in you mate. Its Plain to see SV was faster than any one else yesterday
         1. 

            Benjamin Lozada
            24th September 2013, 5:07

            Commendatore was referring to RBR car design and not the driver. Something like the Brawn GP diffuser.
      2. 

         StuBeck
         24th September 2013, 13:46

         What front wing incident? Horner clearly explained why the wing appeared closer to the ground than other cars, and if you remember in India that year, Ferrari tried actual flexy wings, which passed all the same tests that RBR did, and they were flying all around where it was a very subtle change on RBR’s case.
   2. 

      Aaron Devaney
      25th September 2013, 11:28

      Webber wasn’t in clean air for most of the race. When he was the gap was more like 0.5 – 1 second per lap. In friday practice Webber was actually the faster (By a small margin) and the 2 Rd Bulls were 1.5 seconds faster than anybody else, so it’s the same car. Vettel can just turn it on when he needs to.
2. 

   Mike Dee (@mike-dee)
   22nd September 2013, 23:38

   I wonder what fastest lap would have been had Vettel not have to control the race nursing the braking issue. I reckon it could have been at least another second faster towards the end of the race.
3. 

   Mike Dee (@mike-dee)
   23rd September 2013, 0:09

   Vettel will only be considered a legend once he has a decent team mate on the other side of the garage as this is the only way of fairly assessing how good a driver is.

   There are three types of people:

   – Vettel fans probably thought he was a legend after his second title
   – Vettel haters will always find an excuse – even if he would beat Hamilton in a Ferrari, it would probably be easy to point out that as a German in a German team, he would be favoured
   – Neutral observers would say that Vettel is certainly one of the best drivers currently, and there is a good chance that he is one of the top drivers ever – but how do you really want to compare?

   Personally, these discussions are getting very boring, so I will only contribute to it once: F1 is a team sport. RBR+Vettel has been by far the best team over the last four seasons. Yes, the designers of the car are very important. Yes, the drivers are important. But ultimately, everything needs to fit together. It could well be the case that if you put Vettel in a Ferrari or Mercedes that he will be beaten by Alonso or Hamilton, but it could at the same time also be true that Vettel beats them when they are all in a Red Bull. This means that it may well not be possible – even with complete information – to rank the drivers. You can only rank car+driver combinations.

   Finally, virtually all world champions have been in cars that were better than the opposition, often much more so than in recent seasons. And still, they are considered legends. Ultimately, history books will primarily look at the number of titles and winds, and will not remember the nay-sayers of the time.

   In the interest of exciting races, I hope that Vettel’s competition raises their game and improves their speed. This way, we will not see such an utter dominance as today in Singapore. If it happens once in a season (and I really consider Singapore the only place this year where VET+RBR were so dominant that seemingly nothing could have stopped them from winning), I can live with it. If such dominance is displayed for a full season, it would indeed be boring. But this did not even happen in 2011.
   1. 

      reno (@reno)
      23rd September 2013, 6:37

      I agree with you but the point that the best car wins the champion. For example, 2003: Williams-BMW was the best car but the drivers didn’t deliver, they lost from both Shumi and Kimi and recently, 2007: McLaren was the best car but they lost from Kimi cause of “interrnal” problems
   2. 

      salcrich
      23rd September 2013, 8:56

      Actually there are three types of accountant – those that can count and those that can’t………..
4. 

   Jon Sandor (@jonsan)
   23rd September 2013, 0:42

   I don’t accept the “Rosberg had marbles in his front wing” theory. They showed a close-up of his wing on TV and it was clean. It seemed like he just hit a wall in terms of mental and physical exhaustion for a spell, and then he had a second wind and put a big spurt on towards the end.
   1. 

      BasCB (@bascb)
      3rd October 2013, 14:48

      Why would the team inform him of something like that during the race, and have him adjust settings to re-balance the car then @jonsan? That just doesn’t make more sense than to think RBR is making up technical issues to appear to have a tougher job than they have.
      Mercedes apparently calculated that Rosberg was losing as much as 1.7 sec./lap after the SC because of it, which means that the real difference in speed was still considerable (about half a second) but still too much for comfort (for the other teams)
5. 

   Kim Philby (@philby)
   23rd September 2013, 9:04

   I know tyre strategy determines this up to a point but seeing Alonso in the Ferrari who came second, losing out to Charles’ Pic Caterham is out of this world.
   1. 

      Matthijs (@matthijs)
      23rd September 2013, 9:17

      Why? Pic pitted for fresh super-soft tyres a few laps before the end. So Pic had fresh super soft tyres, Alonso had worn-out mediums. People read too much into these fastest laps. They mean nothing.
6. 

   Jordan
   24th September 2013, 22:54

   I love the data presentations you put together, Keith. Where do these full race lap times come from?

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