2008 Singapore Grand Prix

It was the first ever Formula One race held at night and the 800th Formula One World Championship race overall. It was held at one of two new circuits in 2008, the other being at the 2008 European Grand Prix in Valencia, Spain.

Report

Practice

Hamilton set the fastest time in the first practice session on 26 September. He was followed by Ferraris of Massa and Räikkönen and Hamilton's teammate Kovalainen. Red Bull's Mark Webber suffered a crash on Turn 18 barriers, damaging his front suspension. A number of drivers faced problems in final turn of the track, including Honda's Rubens Barrichello who crashed backwards into barriers. Toyota's Jarno Trulli also spun on this turn and made his way into the pits by driving in the wrong direction. Trulli was fined €10,000 for his misconduct.^[1]^[2]

Renault's Fernando Alonso was fastest in the second practice session, displacing Hamilton to second position with his final flying lap. The two were followed by Kovalainen, Massa and Nico Rosberg. In a close incident, Toro Rosso's Sébastien Bourdais almost ran into Nick Heidfeld of BMW Sauber as he exited from the pit lane into the first turn. In other incidents, Timo Glock lost his front wing on crashing into wall on Turn 7, Giancarlo Fisichella faced gearbox problems and Massa mistakenly took a wrong turn towards the escape road off the track.^[3]^[4]

Alonso was also the fastest man on the track in the final practice session, with Hamilton and Massa second and third respectively. Multiple drivers faced problems with bumps on the track, narrowly avoiding accidents. Fisichella rammed his Force India VJM01 hard into the barriers when it flew off the kerbs on Turn 10 chicane. The accident caused front wing and suspension damages.^[5]^[6]

Qualifying

Räikkönen topped the first qualifying session, ahead of Kovalainen and Hamilton. Nelson Piquet Jr., Sébastien Bourdais, Rubens Barrichello, Adrian Sutil and Giancarlo Fisichella were those who were eliminated in this session. Fisichella could not record a time during the session after he crashed into barriers at Turn 3 due to a punctured tyre, thus was 20th and last.^[7] Barrichello was impeded during his second lap run by Nick Heidfeld and abandoned his lap to enter pits. Both Heidfeld and Barrichello were penalised for their maneuvers: Heidfeld was dropped three grids for blocking and Barrichello was fined €10,000 for unsafe pit lane entry, without using the deceleration zone.^[8]

The second qualifying session was led by Felipe Massa, with Kovalainen and Räikkönen in second and third place. Alonso, despite his performance during practice sessions, was eliminated early in this session when his car suffered a fuel feed problem.^[9] The others who missed the top ten were Jarno Trulli, Jenson Button and both Red Bulls of Mark Webber and David Coulthard. Hamilton barely managed to reach the third session, after a driving mistake during his penultimate lap run.^[7]

Massa took the pole position in the final session, with Hamilton, Räikkönen and Kubica completing first two rows of the grid. Massa secured his position by clocking lap time six-tenths faster than Hamilton, describing it as his best qualifying result of the season.^[7] Kovalainen, managing fifth position, rued his tyre selections in the final session.^[10] Heidfeld, Vettel and Glock scored sixth, seventh and eighth positions, with Williams drivers Rosberg and Nakajima were ninth and tenth.^[11]

Race

Ferrari mechanics routinely work on Felipe Massa's car during his first pit stop; teammate Kimi Räikkönen waits behind him. This was the stop which cost Massa the lead, after the Brazilian was released too early, and left the pit box with the fuel hose still attached to his car. Massa nearly collided with Adrian Sutil in the process.

The race began at 20:00 local time. At the start Massa, on pole position, championship rival Hamilton and Räikkönen all got through the first group of corners without contact and without losing their positions. Further down the field there was also little contact between the drivers. Only Kubica and Kovalainen made any notable contact coming through the first set of corners, with Kovalainen losing two places to Glock and Vettel. Massa began to edge away from Hamilton, who in turn was moving away from Räikkönen. Jarno Trulli had begun the race on a heavy fuel load, and soon was holding up a number of cars with Williams' Nico Rosberg immediately behind him. It was not until the seventh lap that Rosberg finally passed the Trulli's Toyota, and soon Nakajima and Alonso came through as well.

At the front of the pack, Massa had built up a lead of over three seconds to Hamilton within the first ten laps, with Räikkönen a further seven seconds behind him. On lap twelve, Alonso was the first driver came into the pits. He switched his super-soft tyres for the soft compound tyres and rejoined at the back of the field. This was soon to play into the Renault drivers' hands, as teammate Nelson Piquet Jr. hit the wall after losing control of his car at Turn 17 on lap fourteen, prompting the safety car to be deployed. With very little fuel left, Rosberg, Kubica and Rubens Barrichello, whose vehicle shortly after leaving the pit lane had a mechanical failure and became the second retirement of the race, had no choice but to pit despite the pit lane being closed. After all the cars were behind the safety car, the pit lane was opened and nearly all the drivers pitted. Both Rosberg and Kubica were later penalized for their early stops, in accordance with race regulations.

With both Räikkönen behind him and the lead to contest with Hamilton, Ferrari accidently released Massa prematurely with the fuel hose was still attached to the car. Like in Valencia, the Brazilian was also released into the path of Adrian Sutil, who had to take action to avoid the Ferrari. Massa went the full length of the pitlane before stopping just before the exit. In the time it took the mechanics to run down the pitlane and remove the hose from the car, he had lost track position and was now at the back of the field. Because they had pitted, or were on one stop strategies and thus were not due in yet, a number of cars competing in the midfield prior to the safety car were leading the field. At the front were Rosberg, Trulli, Fisichella, Kubica, Alonso, Webber and Coulthard.

Rosberg started to pull away from the heavily fuelled Trulli and Fisichella with the Force India driver holding up most of the field behind him. During the next few laps three drivers were given penalties: Rosberg and Kubica were given 10 second stop-and-go penalties for pitting in a closed pitlane, and Felipe Massa was given a drive through penalty for an unsafe release, as opposed to the fine he received after the similar incident at the European Grand Prix. The Ferrari driver was the first of the trio to serve his penalty and rejoined the track in the same position in came in, last. Kubica was the second, coming into the pits in fourth and rejoining the race near the back of the field. After building a lead of over fifteen seconds to Trulli, Rosberg served his penalty and rejoined the circuit in fourth behind the Toyota. Now leading the race was Trulli and Fisichella.

The podium, (left to right): Rosberg celebrates his best Grand Prix finish to date, Alonso takes the top step of the podium for the first time since the 2007 Italian Grand Prix exactly a year before, while Hamilton takes third to extend his lead over Massa in the Drivers' Championship.

A lap later, Fisichella came in from second to make his first pit stop, moving Alonso into second and Rosberg into third. Trulli led the race for a further four more laps before making his one and only stop of the night, giving the lead to Alonso. He soon pulled away from Rosberg who pitted from second on lap 41, rejoining in seventh. Alonso made his final stop a lap later and rejoined ahead of second and third place Coulthard and Hamilton. The same lap, the McLaren overtook the Red Bull at turn seven and both cars pitted at the end of the lap.

45 laps in to the race, Alonso led Timo Glock by just over six seconds and Rosberg by a further eleven seconds in third. The Toyota driver pitted two laps later, coming out in fifth. Four laps later, teammate Trulli began to slow down and soon retired after a mechanical failure. The same lap, Räikkönen made his second and final stop of the race and rejoined in fifth. A lap later, Massa spun and lightly tapped the tyre wall, Sutil also fell victim to the same corner, coming off worse than the Ferrari and becoming the fifth retirement of the night.

Sutil's incident brought out the second safety car period of the race. With ten laps remaining, Alonso, Rosberg and Hamilton occupied the podium positions with Glock, Räikkönen, Vettel, Heidfeld and Coulthard making up the remaining spots in the top eight. After two laps, the safety car withdrew from the circuit with the Renault pulling away from the field. Rosberg was coming under pressure from Hamilton, who was looking to capitalize on Massa being out of the points. Three laps to go and while chasing Glock, Räikkönen bounced off the kerbs at the Turn 10 chicane and crashed into the barriers, promoting Nakajima into the points. Alonso maintained his lead over Rosberg and took his first win for Renault since his return to the team from McLaren. Rosberg took second and Hamilton settled for third. Massa finished in 13th place, and the points deficit between himself and Hamilton increased, improving Hamilton's chances of taking the Driver's Championship. With team-mate Räikkönen failing to finish, this was the first time the Ferrari team had failed to score any points in a race since the 2006 Australian Grand Prix.

Post-race

Fernado Alonso credited his success to the team's strategy and bit of luck. He said that the team chose a two-stop strategy with a short initial stint as opposed to a one-stop strategy, considering the difficulties of overtaking on the track and possibility of brake problems.^[12] Nico Rosberg was pleased with his career best result,^[12] although he recalled when he thought his efforts for a good finish might have been in vain after being given a stop-and-go penalty. He mentioned that he had to come in for the pit stops on the same lap that the safety car came out, and admitted that he was annoyed with the penalty.^[13] Hamilton said that he tried to get close to Rosberg towards the final laps, after the second safety car period. However, seeing that overtaking was extremely risky, he decided against it, considering that neither of the Ferraris was going to score.^[12]

Ferrari team prinicipal Stefano Domenicali said that the reason for Massa's pit incident was not the electronic signalling system but a human error. He defended the electronic system saying that the system saves any reaction time for the driver as opposed to a standard "lollipop" system, and considering it was a human error, the incident may have happened with a lollipop as well.^[14]

Toyota filed a protest against Toro Rosso for releasing Sebastian Vettel in Timo Glock's path during first pit stop.^[15] The stewards however rejected Toyota's plea.^[16]

Reactions

The international media and most of the F1 fraternity were united in lavishing accolades on the Republic, after a successful staging of the SingTel Singapore Grand Prix. Fears which were previously expressed about the weather, visibility and narrow nature of the circuit itself all proved unfounded. Organisation of the event itself was widely deemed to be impeccable as the ushering, transport, and security services all ran like clockwork. However, the drivers did complain about how bumpy the track was, particularly off the racing line, which made overtaking difficult on a street circuit hemmed in by barriers.^[17]

Sports supremo and Formula One's commercial rights holder Bernie Ecclestone heralded the Singapore Grand Prix as the "new jewel in the Formula One sports crown", a phrase often used to describe the Monaco Grand Prix circuit.^[18] He described Singapore as an example to follow and would make people reconsider their opinions of Asia.^[19]

Locally, Sunday's F1 night race on MediaCorp TV Channel 5 drew more viewers than the Beijing Olympics opening ceremony in the previous month, becoming the highest-rated programme for the year. The average ratings for Sunday’s race were 17.8 per cent, or 789,000 viewers, as compared to 17.3 per cent (765,000 viewers) for the opening of the Beijing Games. The world’s inaugural F1 race under floodlights is reported to have been watched by an estimated global TV audience of about 400 million.^[27]

Classification

Qualifying