Who has the most non-finishes in Singapore? Which team have finished on the podium every year since 2010? And what happens to the race’s infrastructure during the off-season? Here’s the Marina Bay Street Circuit in numbers!
Images © Andrew Balfour / motorsportguides.com.
0.007
The smallest pole margin at the Singapore Grand Prix is 0.007 seconds, which was the difference in lap time between polesitter Lewis Hamilton and team-mate Nico Rosberg in 2014. Until recently, it was the smallest pole margin of the V6 hybrid era, but it was beaten at the 2019 British Grand Prix when Valtteri Bottas took pole by 0.006 seconds!
1
From the eleven Singapore Grands Prix held since the Marina Bay Street Circuit joined the calendar in 2008, there has been only one occasion where the leaders of the Constructors’ Championship after a race at the track have failed to go on and win the title. That happened in 2008, when McLaren led the title chase by a single point after the race. It was Ferrari who would eventually take the honours that year, finishing 21 points ahead of McLaren.
3
No driver is yet to record more than three DNFs at the Marina Bay Circuit, though plenty have had this number of retirements in Singapore. The list of seven drivers who’ve retired three times from the Singapore Grand Prix includes Lewis Hamilton, who was out in 2010, 2012 and 2015. Other drivers from the current grid who feature on this list are Nico Hulkenberg and Romain Grosjean. Grosjean also recorded a Did Not Start in 2016.
4
The Singapore Grand Prix is one of the most physically demanding races of the year, and it’s also one of the longest. Four races at the track have exceeded the two-hour time limit, and every race at the track has lasted longer than 110 minutes. The shortest race so far was last year’s event, which was won in a time of 1 hour, 51 minutes and 11.611 seconds.
12
Red Bull have scored the most podium finishes of any team at the Singapore Grand Prix, with twelve. That’s double the number that both Ferrari and Mercedes have taken here. Though Red Bull haven’t won the race since 2013, they have seen at least one of their cars finish on the podium in all of the last nine seasons; one of their drivers has also finished as runner-up in every year since 2014.
13th
The polesitter has had only three results at the Singapore Grand Prix – a win, a retirement, or a 13th place finish. The only driver to have finished thirteenth having started from pole in Singapore is Felipe Massa, whose race was derailed by a pit stop disaster, which saw him drag a fuel hose down the pit lane.
23
The Marina Bay circuit has 23 corners. That’s the most of any circuit on the current calendar!
32.627
Sebastian Vettel holds the record for the largest victory margin in Singapore; he won by 32.627 seconds in 2013. It’s one of only two occasions where the Singapore Grand Prix has been won by over ten seconds, the other time being in the following season, when Lewis Hamilton finished 13.534 seconds ahead of his nearest rival. Victory has been decided by less than one second on four occasions at the Marina Bay Street Circuit!
33
Since the first race in 2008, 33 drivers have scored points at the Singapore Grand Prix.
100%
The Safety Car likelihood based on previous events at the track is 100%. There’s yet to be a race at the Marina Bay Circuit which hasn’t featured a Safety Car. The reasons for it being deployed have been plentiful, from purposeful crashes to a person wandering on the track! The most Safety Car periods in a single Singapore Grand Prix is three, which happened in the rain-affected 2017 race.
1600
There are 1,600 lighting projectors located around the Marina Bay Street Circuit, producing around the same amount of light used by a small city. The whole system has a 10 Megawatt emergency generator.
38,130m2
Preparations for the Singapore Grand Prix begin in May each year, when all of the non-permanent race-related infrastructure is removed from a 38,130m2 storage facility located in the east of Singapore.