Sebastian Vettel won at Sepang after ignoring a Red Bull order to hold position behind Mark Webber, an episode that shaped the rest of the 2013 title fight.
Vettel took the 2013 Malaysian Grand Prix from pole at Sepang after passing Mark Webber on the 46th lap, despite a Red Bull team order. Lewis Hamilton was third, and the win gave Vettel the championship lead. It was his first win of 2013, and it made him the leader of the Drivers' Championship.
Sebastian Vettel won the 2013 Malaysian Grand Prix from pole, but the result is remembered for how it was achieved. He disregarded a Red Bull team order to hold position behind his teammate Mark Webber, passed him for the lead and went on to win. Lewis Hamilton finished third for Mercedes, and the episode became one of the most discussed moments of the season.
What was the 2013 Malaysian Grand Prix?
The race took place on 24 March 2013 at the Sepang International Circuit in Selangor and was the second of the 19 rounds in the championship. Spectators numbering 90,000 filled the grandstands for this fifteenth Formula One race held in Malaysia, a 56-lap contest.
Motor racing in Malaysia dates back to the 1960s, when events were run in Singapore and later at the Shah Alam Circuit. When Formula One arrived in 1999, the race moved to the purpose-built Sepang track, which hosted every Malaysian edition until 2017.
Kimi Raikkonen had won the season-opening Australian Grand Prix a week earlier and led the drivers' table with 25 points. Ferrari led the constructors on 30 points, with Lotus on 26 and Red Bull on 23, so the early season had few clear favourites.
Ignoring a team order on lap 46 gave Vettel the win at Sepang, and a championship lead that he would not give up that season.
How did the teams prepare for Sepang?
Pirelli brought medium, hard, intermediate and wet-weather tyres to the weekend. DRS was available in two zones: one on the run linking turns 14 and 15, the other on the straight between the last and first corners. The pit lane wall gained a longer debris fence to shield the marshals.
Telemetry reliability had again been a problem, and the FIA had disabled the link between race control and the cars for a second race in a row. Drivers had to respond to safety car signals by pressing a button on the steering wheel, and they rehearsed the new procedure in a test after the third practice session.
Several teams made changes to their cars. Sauber gave Nico Hulkenberg a new chassis after a fuel-system fault had stopped him at Melbourne, and it added a fin to improve airflow. Red Bull fitted extra cooling outlets to its car to cope with the warm climate, and Ferrari opened the exhausts on its car to help clear hot air from the sidepods.
How did practice unfold in the heat?
Three practice sessions were held, two of 90 minutes on Friday and one of 60 minutes on Saturday. The first session took place in hot and humid conditions, and no driver set a competitive lap for the first 34 minutes. Webber set the early marker, Vettel followed close behind, and Webber then improved to 1:36.395 to go fastest.
Raikkonen missed the first 55 minutes while Lotus replaced a KERS battery that had failed because of a sensor problem, but he was still second-fastest. In the second session a heavy shower interrupted the running, and Raikkonen set the pace at 1:36.569. Gutierrez's fire extinguisher fired after he hit a kerb, and a fractured exhaust then ended his session.
In the final session most drivers ran hard tyres at first, then moved to medium tyres as the track improved. Vettel took the lead on medium tyres with a 1:36.435 lap and three minutes remaining. Late in the session Hamilton's right-front tyre lost a tread after he had locked the wheel and flat-spotted it, and part of the tyre damaged his front wing on the back straight.
How did qualifying go in a damp session?
Saturday's qualifying was split into three parts. The first lasted 18 minutes, the second 15 minutes and the final ten minutes decided the top ten. The 107 per cent rule applied, so every car had to set a time within that margin of the fastest lap to qualify.
A downpour arrived shortly before the second session ended and dampened the track between the fifth and sixth corners. Drivers switched to intermediate tyres, and the final session was run in wet-weather conditions. Vettel had used a single set of medium tyres in the first two sessions to limit wear, then used intermediates in the closing minutes of the third session to take pole with a 1:49.674 lap.
That was Vettel's second pole of the year and his 38th overall. Massa started second, his first front-row start since the 2010 Bahrain Grand Prix, and he was faster than his teammate Alonso, who took third, for the fourth race running. Hamilton used an older set of intermediates to keep Mercedes' strategy alive and qualified fourth. Webber took fifth, and a miscommunication from the pit wall at the end of the session allowed Hamilton past and stopped Webber from improving.
Rosberg had been fastest in the first session but dropped to sixth in the final on a used set of intermediates. Raikkonen was seventh, Button eighth and Sutil ninth, and Perez was tenth. The stewards then docked Raikkonen three grid places for impeding Rosberg, lifting Button to seventh, Sutil to eighth and Perez to ninth.
How did the race begin?
The race began on a wet track after a downpour half an hour before the start. The air temperature was between 24 and 25 degrees Celsius, and standing water caused spray and reduced visibility. Turn three had flooded, and several drivers aquaplaned into the gravel before the start, with all cars starting on intermediate tyres.
At the lights Vettel kept his lead into the first corner. Massa and Alonso moved towards each other behind him. Alonso then ran into the back of Vettel's car at turn two and damaged his front wing, while Webber passed both Mercedes cars and took third before battling Alonso for second on the opening lap.
Early in lap two Webber drew level with Alonso, and the Ferrari's front wing came away at the end of the main straight. The car ran into the gravel at turn one, and track stewards refused his request to be pulled out, making it the first retirement of the race. DRS was enabled from the third lap.
What happened in the early laps and pit stops?
Webber climbed from fifth to second early on and inherited the lead when Vettel stopped for dry tyres on lap five. Red Bull warned him that the third corner was too damp for dry tyres, so he produced a run of quick laps and stayed ahead until the seventh lap.
Hamilton pitted on lap eight, and he mistakenly drove into the McLaren stall before being waved on. Toro Rosso sent Vergne out into Pic's path at about the same moment, and the two cars touched. The stewards fined the Toro Rosso team 10,000 dollars for an unsafe release, though Vergne received no time penalty.
After the pit stops Webber led Vettel and Hamilton. Grosjean passed Ricciardo for ninth, and Raikkonen later dropped back after running wide. Maldonado lost half of his front wing on lap 13 after running across the gravel at one of the corners, and he rejoined near the back.
What happened in the middle stint?
By lap 15 Webber led Vettel by 2.2 seconds, with Hamilton a similar distance further back. Webber was managing the pace, which left Vettel close enough to be disturbed by turbulence from the car ahead. Webber pitted for medium tyres at the end of that lap and rejoined fifth, behind Button.
Vettel took the lead and was told by his race engineer to speed up to keep it. He and Rosberg made their second stops at the end of lap 22, and Webber returned to the front. Sutil lost well over a minute at a pit stop because of a recurring fault with the captive wheel nut system, and he dropped down the order. Force India then called Sutil and di Resta into retirement, as the problem could not be fixed in time without risking damage to the cars.
Late in the middle stint Vettel crept within a second of Webber, with Hamilton also closing. Vettel asked the team to have Webber give up the lead, because he believed he was the faster driver. Webber then found a few tenths and broke away from Vettel.
The third round of stops began on lap 30, with Hamilton switching to hard tyres. Webber and Rosberg stopped the next lap, and Vettel followed so that he would not be undercut by Hamilton. Button led for a short spell, but Webber took the lead back before the first corner.
Button then suffered a costly stop. A lighting fault in McLaren's pit system released him early, before a mechanic had fitted his right-front wheel, and he lost two minutes and emerged 14th. At the front, Hamilton was told to conserve fuel as Mercedes struggled to match the speed of the Red Bulls. On lap 39 Vettel used DRS to pass him for second.
Why did Red Bull issue a team order?
On lap 45 Red Bull used its team order system with the code Multi 21, telling both drivers to reduce engine performance, for Webber to stay in first and for Vettel to hold second without challenging his teammate. According to commentator Alex Jacques, the order followed heavy tyre wear in Melbourne and fuel problems caused by an aggressive start.
On the 46th lap Vettel ignored the order. He ran alongside Webber, used DRS and KERS and turned past him on the approach to turn four, taking the lead with better traction. Webber had moved towards the pit wall, and the two came close to touching at close to high speed before both avoided a collision. Christian Horner reprimanded Vettel over the radio as they went into turn one, and Vettel kept Webber on the edge of the track at the next corner.
Vettel later framed the move as a response to Webber's earlier conduct, pointing back to a clash in Brazil in 2012. The win was his first of 2013 and his 27th in total, a tally that matched the record of three-time world champion Jackie Stewart.
How did Mercedes handle its race?
Rosberg was keen to pass his teammate Hamilton on lap 50, but Mercedes team principal Ross Brawn refused. Brawn wanted both cars to finish and to limit Hamilton's pace, to protect his position in the championship. He also wanted to stop the drivers slipstreaming each other, because that would have affected their fuel use.
Late in the race Brawn radioed Hamilton to save fuel while Rosberg held his place. Hamilton finished third, which gave him his first podium with Mercedes, and Rosberg finished fourth. Massa was fifth, Grosjean sixth and Raikkonen seventh, while Hulkenberg took eighth to score Sauber's first points of the season.
Who finished where at Sepang?
| Position | Driver | Team | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| First | Sebastian Vettel | Red Bull Racing | Pole and a win that ignored the team order; 27th career win |
| Second | Mark Webber | Red Bull Racing | Finished 4.298 seconds behind his teammate |
| Third | Lewis Hamilton | Mercedes | First Mercedes podium finish |
| Fourth | Nico Rosberg | Mercedes | Held position on Brawn's instruction |
| Eighth | Nico Hulkenberg | Sauber | Sauber's first points of the season |
| Ninth | Sergio Perez | McLaren | Fastest lap of 1:39.199 on the final lap |
How did the rivalry play out after the flag?
After the race Webber turned across Vettel's path on the pit wall, where Vettel was celebrating with the team, in anger at how the win had come about. Adrian Newey, Red Bull's technical director, informed Webber that Vettel had been told to hold position. Webber weighed a boycott of the podium before being persuaded otherwise.
In the cool-down room Vettel tried to speak to Webber, who would not engage with him. Webber simply told him that the order had been Multi 21. During the podium interviews Vettel described the battle as close, wheel to wheel. Webber's view was that Vettel had chosen to pass him independently, and that Red Bull's management would shield Vettel.
Hamilton said that Rosberg should have finished third, because he had been faster. At the press conference Vettel said he had put himself first and accepted the label of an outsider in the team. Webber said that he had spent the closing laps thinking about the races that had gone before.
Why did the team-order row matter so much?
Vettel said later that he had ignored the order partly as payback for Webber's earlier behaviour. Earlier, at the 2011 British Grand Prix, Webber had gone against instructions to hold station behind Vettel,. At the 2012 Brazilian Grand Prix, Webber had forced Vettel toward the wall at the start, and he later delayed letting Vettel through when instructed.
The row was also part of a longer rivalry. Vettel and Webber had collided at the 2010 Turkish Grand Prix, which forced Vettel to retire. Horner spoke to both drivers the night after the race, and Vettel flew to the Red Bull factory in Milton Keynes on 26 March to apologise to staff.
Red Bull did not discipline Vettel, because his lawyers had threatened legal action. In China, three weeks later, he withdrew his apology for the win, arguing that he had been racing, was faster and had got past Webber. Webber later said he believed Vettel might regret the incident.
What did the result mean for the championship?
The win moved Vettel into the lead of the Drivers' Championship on 40 points, and he would not give that lead up for the rest of the season. Raikkonen dropped to second in the standings, Webber climbed to third, Hamilton reached fourth, and Massa slipped from fourth to fifth.
Red Bull took the lead of the Constructors' Championship with 60 points. Lotus stayed second, while Ferrari dropped from first to third. Mercedes and Force India kept fourth and fifth, with 17 races still to run in the season.
