Sebastian Vettel and Red Bull conclusively turned the tables on Mercedes in Practice Two in a jaw-dropping show of strength around the Singapore GP street circuit. Vettel headed Mark Webber at the head of the timesheet – a full second over the first non-Red Bull car.
But while what was 0.6s gap to his team-mate was a massive margin, such appears to be the dominance of Red Bull over the 5km lap that Webber was still four tenths of a second quicker than the Mercedes pair of Nico Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton in third and fourth respectively.
Romain Grosjean completed only 18 laps in the afternoon, taking his day’s tally up to a relatively meager 30, owing to a recurrence of the power steering problems that affected his E21 in P2, but the Frenchman was fast when he was out on the circuit, pipping Fernando Alonso to fifth place.
On a brighter note, McLaren – now firmly at the centre of transfer speculation regarding the aforementioned Spaniard – ran respectively close to both Lotus and Ferrari with Jenson Button splitting the latter’s prospective 2014 line-up of Alonso and Kimi Raikkonen.
Pos Driver Team Time Gap 1. Sebastian Vettel Red Bull-Renault 1m44.249s 2. Mark Webber Red Bull-Renault 1m44.853s +0.604s 3. Nico Rosberg Mercedes 1m45.258s +1.009s 4. Lewis Hamilton Mercedes 1m45.368s +1.119s 5. Romain Grosjean Lotus-Renault 1m45.411s +1.162s 6. Fernando Alonso Ferrari 1m45.691s +1.442s 7. Jenson Button McLaren-Mercedes 1m45.754s +1.505s 8. Kimi Raikkonen Lotus-Renault 1m45.778s +1.529s 9. Adrian Sutil Force India-Mercedes 1m46.002s +1.753s 10. Sergio Perez McLaren-Mercedes 1m46.025s +1.776s 11. Daniel Ricciardo Toro Rosso-Ferrari 1m46.406s +2.157s 12. Jean-Eric Vergne Toro Rosso-Ferrari 1m46.429s +2.180s 13. Paul di Resta Force India-Mercedes 1m46.606s +2.357s 14. Nico Hulkenberg Sauber-Ferrari 1m46.808s +2.559s 15. Felipe Massa Ferrari 1m46.870s +2.621s 16. Esteban Gutierrez Sauber-Ferrari 1m47.287s +3.038s 17. Valtteri Bottas Williams-Renault 1m47.434s +3.185s 18. Pastor Maldonado Williams-Renault 1m47.761s +3.512s 19. Giedo van der Garde Caterham-Renault 1m49.434s +5.185s 20. Charles Pic Caterham-Renault 1m49.526s +5.277s 21. Max Chilton Marussia-Cosworth 1m49.619s +5.370s 22. Jules Bianchi Marussia-Cosworth 1m49.731s +5.482s