Pre-season testing – Jerez de la Frontera and Barcelona The 2012 season was preceded by three test sessions; one at Jerez de la Frontera and two in Barcelona. These sessions gave the teams and drivers the opportunity to familiarise themselves with their cars, though the teams downplayed the accuracy of testing times as being representative of the running order for the season. At the second test in Barcelona,
Lotus F1 discovered a critical fault in the build of
their chassis that forced them to miss four days of running, while both
HRT and
Marussia were unable to complete any mileage with their 2012 cars after both the
HRT F112 and
Marussia MR01 failed their crash tests, though both teams were able to complete shakedowns of their cars.
Round 1 – Australia Albert Park Circuit failed to qualify for the Australian Grand Prix for the
second consecutive year. The season began in Australia.
Jenson Button took an early lead from pole-sitter
Lewis Hamilton and the
Red Bull cars while the rest of the field was bottle-necked by contact in the first corner. Button remained unchallenged throughout, even after a mid-race safety car to retrieve the stricken
Caterham of
Vitaly Petrov. Button went on to take his third victory at the
Melbourne circuit, ahead of
Sebastian Vettel, who profited from the safety car to pass Hamilton.
McLaren team principal
Martin Whitmarsh later admitted that Button was "more than marginal" on fuel after the team made a mistake in calculating their fuel loads for the race, forcing Button to use a "severe fuel-saving mode" from the eighth lap of the race. Hamilton came under threat from
Mark Webber in the late stages of the race, but held on to secure third place. Webber finished fourth – his best result in his home Grand Prix – while
Fernando Alonso finished fifth, having endured pressure from
Pastor Maldonado for the last half of the race. Maldonado's race ended when he crossed onto the astroturf on the final lap and spun into the wall.
Kimi Räikkönen finished seventh after a poor qualifying session saw him start the race seventeenth, taking advantage of a chaotic final lap to make up two places, while
Felipe Massa and
Bruno Senna both retired after a bizarre collision that saw their cars tangled up in one another.
HRT failed to qualify for the race for the
second consecutive season after drivers
Pedro de la Rosa and
Narain Karthikeyan failed to set a lap time
within 107% of the fastest qualifying time. described driving the
Ferrari F2012 as "like walking on a tightrope". took the first podium of his career in
Malaysia.
Round 2 – Malaysia Sepang International Circuit McLaren locked out the front row of the grid for the second race in succession, with
Lewis Hamilton once again on pole. Both
HRT cars qualified for the race, but filled out the final row of the grid almost two seconds behind
Marussia's Charles Pic in twenty-second position. In the race, Hamilton made a better start than
Jenson Button, but his lead was short-lived; heavy rain interrupted the race, forcing the suspension of the Grand Prix. When the race restarted an hour later, Button was involved in contact with
Narain Karthikeyan that forced him to make an unscheduled stop for a new front wing, while Hamilton had a slow pit stop and was held in the lane while other cars passed.
Fernando Alonso inherited the lead, with
Sauber's
Sergio Pérez a surprise second, having made an early stop for extreme wet weather tyres and then taking advantage of a rush to the pit lane to position himself in third at the restart. As the race wore on, Pérez began to quickly catch Alonso on a drying track.
Daniel Ricciardo was the first driver to pit for dry-weather tyres on lap 38, triggering another round of stops. Sauber and Pérez initially looked as if they had left their stop too late when Pérez emerged from the pits five seconds behind Alonso, but he began catching the
two-time World Champion at the same rate as he had before. Pérez closed to within half a second with seven laps to go, but ran wide at turn 14 and lost five seconds, later admitting that it was his mistake. He was unable to close the gap, and Alonso went on to win the race by two seconds, the win giving him a five-point lead in the championship. Pérez was second, taking his first podium and Sauber's best ever result as an independent team. Hamilton finished third ahead of
Mark Webber and
Kimi Räikkönen, while Button had to settle for fourteenth.
Bruno Senna finished in sixth, scoring more points in a single race than
his team scored in .
Sebastian Vettel finished outside the points after making contact with Karthikeyan and developing a puncture.
Round 3 – China Shanghai International Circuit 's rear wing was an ongoing issue early in the season. The championship resumed three weeks later in China, with the lead-in period to the race marked by
Lotus F1 protesting the legality of
Mercedes's rear wing design. The FIA rejected the protest, and with Mercedes allowed to continue racing with their car unchanged,
Nico Rosberg took his – and the team's – first pole position since their return to Formula One in , while a penalty to
Lewis Hamilton for a gearbox change promoted
Michael Schumacher to second on the grid. Schumacher would ultimately retire from the race after the first round of stops when it was discovered that one of his wheels had not been attached properly. Rosberg took an early lead in the race, and while his attempt to complete the race with only two pit stops came under threat from second-placed
Jenson Button, a mistake by Button's pit crew during his final stop handed Rosberg a nineteen-second advantage over
Kimi Räikkönen. Räikkönen was attempting a similar two-stop strategy, but his tyres wore out seven laps from the end of the race, and he lost eleven positions in a single lap. This forced Rosberg to drive conservatively to preserve his tyres while Button recovered from his disastrous pit stop to pass
Sebastian Vettel for second. Button was held up by the incumbent World Champion long enough for Rosberg to preserve his tyres, and he became the
103rd person to win a Grand Prix. The result was also Mercedes's first win as a constructor since
Juan Manuel Fangio won the
1955 Italian Grand Prix. Button was second, with Hamilton scoring his third consecutive third place, giving him a two-point championship lead over Button;
Fernando Alonso, who had been leading the championship before the race, finished ninth. After two retirements in the opening rounds of the championship,
Romain Grosjean scored his first points in Formula One by finishing sixth. against the ruling
Al Khalifa family.
Round 4 – Bahrain International Circuit In the face of ongoing media speculation and public pressure to cancel the race due to
ongoing political instability in Bahrain, the FIA released a statement at the Chinese Grand Prix confirming that the Bahrain Grand Prix would go ahead as planned. The week preceding the Grand Prix saw a renewed wave of
protests against the government's attempts use the race to "tell the outside world that the whole thing is back to normal", while human rights organisations including
Amnesty International criticised the decision to hold the race amid the violent crackdowns. Three days before the race, a group of
Force India mechanics travelling in an unmarked hire car were involved in a
petrol bombing incident at an impromptu roadblock and were briefly exposed to
tear gas fired by security forces. There were no injuries or damage, but two of the mechanics involved chose to leave the country. The team later announced their intentions to race despite the incident.
Sebastian Vettel qualified on pole, his first since the
2011 Brazilian Grand Prix.
Heikki Kovalainen qualified sixteenth, the second time
Caterham (and its predecessor,
Team Lotus) advanced beyond the first qualifying period in dry conditions. Vettel went on to win the race – becoming the fourth winner in as many races – after spending much of the race defending against
Kimi Räikkönen. Having started eleventh, Räikkönen used an extra set of soft tyres to move up through the field. His team-mate,
Romain Grosjean, finished third. Grosjean had initially shown the pace to challenge Vettel's lead, but unlike Räikkönen, he did not have an extra set of fresh tyres, and lost touch with the reigning World Champion after the first set of stops.
Lewis Hamilton finished eighth, once again hampered by slow pit stops. He was later involved in an altercation with
Nico Rosberg that saw Rosberg referred to the stewards for forcing Hamilton beyond the boundary of the circuit while defending his position, but he escaped without penalty. Hamilton went on to finish eighth, while team-mate
Jenson Button was forced to retire two laps from the end of the race after reporting an unusual vibration from the differential.
Daniel Ricciardo was involved in early contact that saw the Australian driver slide down the order from sixth at the start to fifteenth by the end of the race, having spent most of the Grand Prix caught behind
Vitaly Petrov. Vettel's win gave him a four-point lead in the championship over Hamilton, while
Mark Webber's fourth consecutive fourth place secured third overall.
Red Bull Racing took the lead from McLaren in the World Constructors' Championship, while
Lotus's double podium moved them into third overall.
Mid-season test – Mugello Starting on 1 May, the teams conducted a three-day test at the
Mugello Circuit in Italy ahead of the Spanish Grand Prix. The test gave teams the opportunity to assess major aerodynamic upgrades before racing them.
HRT elected not to take part in the test, instead choosing to concentrate on establishing themselves at their new headquarters in
Madrid. while
Caterham driver
Vitaly Petrov was critical of the choice of Mugello as a testing venue as he felt it was not safe enough for Formula One. Petrov's comments came shortly after
Fernando Alonso crashed on the final morning of the test. Red Bull Racing and Lotus team principals
Christian Horner and
Éric Boullier were also critical of the test as they felt that the costs of conducting in-season testing outweighed any benefits, with Horner stating his opposition to continuing mid-season testing in the future.
Round 5 – Spain Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya Following criticism over the sensitivity of their tyre compounds, tyre supplier
Pirelli announced changes to their tyre allocation for the Spanish Grand Prix, making pit strategy the focal point of the Grand Prix. Pirelli would later diagnose the problems with the tyre compounds as originating from developing them on a testing chassis that was
two years out-of-date at the time.
Lewis Hamilton took his third pole of the season, edging out
Williams driver
Pastor Maldonado by half a second, while Maldonado's team-mate
Bruno Senna was eliminated early when he spun. Hamilton was later excluded from the qualifying results after
his car did not have enough fuel to return to the pits for scrutineering, promoting Maldonado to pole position and moving Hamilton to the back of the grid.
Fernando Alonso took the lead of the race at the first corner, but Maldonado reclaimed it during the second round of pit stops, when his team forced Ferrari to pit early while Alonso was held up by the
Marussia of
Charles Pic. Maldonado maintained a lead of seven seconds over Alonso, but a mistake by his crew during the third pit stop cost him time and left him vulnerable to the Ferrari driver in the final stint of the race. Meanwhile, third-placed
Kimi Räikkönen moved to an ambitious strategy that would see him attempt to force Maldonado and Alonso to race beyond the life expectancy of their tyres, allowing him to swoop in at the last minute to steal first place. Räikkönen's strategy failed as Maldonado withstood pressure from Alonso for fifteen laps, winning the race by three seconds and becoming the first Venezuelan driver to win a Formula One Grand Prix. It was Williams's first win in one hundred and thirty Grand Prix starts; their previous race win was
Juan Pablo Montoya's victory at the
2004 Brazilian Grand Prix. Lewis Hamilton recovered from twenty-fourth on the grid to finish eighth, while
Sebastian Vettel overcame a drive-through penalty and an unscheduled stop for a technical fault that forced his team to replace his front wing to make a late move on
Nico Rosberg for sixth place that would preserve his championship lead.
Round 6 – Monaco Circuit de Monaco For the second consecutive race, the fastest driver in qualifying did not start the race from pole.
Michael Schumacher set the fastest time, but a five-place grid penalty left him sixth overall. Two hours before the race, protests against parts introduced onto the floor of the
Red Bull RB8 left team principal
Christian Horner with a choice: to change the offending parts and start both cars from the pit lane, guaranteeing that any result the team recorded would be preserved; or to leave the parts on the car, allowing both drivers to start the race from the positions they qualified in, but risking a post-race exclusion. Horner ultimately chose the latter option, and
Mark Webber started from pole, establishing an early lead over
Nico Rosberg as a first-corner accident eliminated four cars. The race was run under the constant threat of rain, with drivers trying to extend the life of their tyres to avoid being forced to make an additional stop and falling down the order. The rain never materialised, though
Jean-Éric Vergne was observed using a set of intermediate tyres late in the race. The variety of strategies used by the front-runners resulted in the last ten laps being contested with the top six cars running nose-to-tail. Webber visibly faded in the final laps, but held on when the following cars were momentarily pinned behind the slow-moving
Heikki Kovalainen. Webber won the race – his second on the streets of Monaco – with Rosberg second and
Fernando Alonso third, the result giving Alonso a three-point lead in the championship.
Red Bull Racing maintained their lead in the Constructors' Championship as rival teams chose not to follow through on the threat of their pre-race protest, while Kovalainen finished thirteenth to see Caterham overtake Marussia for tenth place. Elsewhere, Spanish Grand Prix winner
Pastor Maldonado was given a ten-place grid penalty for an incident that saw him clip
Sergio Pérez. Combined with a five-place penalty for changing his gearbox, Maldonado started from the back row of the grid where he was eliminated in the first-corner accident. Despite the ruling, the team's results were kept intact. The team was also forced to change the design of their axles, after FIA Race Director
Charlie Whiting felt that holes in the axles contravened the technical regulations. Nevertheless,
Sebastian Vettel comfortably took pole position by three-tenths of a second. Vettel controlled the early phase of the race, but was caught and passed by
Lewis Hamilton before the first round of stops, while
Fernando Alonso slipped through shortly afterwards. All three drivers were using a two-stop strategy at the time, but as Hamilton made his second stop, both Alonso and Vettel shifted to a one-stop strategy, with Alonso's team resorting to discussing strategy options in his native
Spanish to prevent their rivals from overhearing their plans. Hamilton had twenty laps to make up a twelve-second deficit, and he easily reeled Vettel in; in response, Red Bull pitted the reigning World Champion, and Vettel fell to fifth. Hamilton's next target was Alonso, whose tyres lost all grip and he fell victim to Hamilton,
Romain Grosjean,
Sergio Pérez and Vettel in quick succession. Hamilton won the race, becoming the seventh winner in seven races and taking a two-point lead in the championship. Grosjean's second place saw
Lotus take third place in the Constructors' Championship from
Ferrari. Both Grosjean and Pérez expressed surprise at finishing on the podium, while
2011 winner Jenson Button finished sixteenth in what he described as his "worst race in years" and
Michael Schumacher suffered a hydraulics failure that left his
drag reduction system (DRS) device jammed in the open position.
Round 8 – Europe Valencia Street Circuit Fernando Alonso became the first man to win two races in 2012 at the European Grand Prix in Valencia, scoring his first home win since the
2006 Spanish Grand Prix. Starting eleventh, he was forced to navigate his way through traffic, narrowly avoiding early contact between
Bruno Senna and
Kamui Kobayashi as
Sebastian Vettel broke free of the field to establish a twenty-second lead by the first round of stops. Vettel's lead was quashed when
Heikki Kovalainen and
Jean-Éric Vergne made contact, triggering the deployment of the safety car to clear debris from the circuit. Alonso found himself third at the restart and pounced on a mistake by second-placed
Romain Grosjean to lead the chase against Vettel. Vettel pulled away once more, but his lead was short-lived as he lost drive and his engine shut down on lap 33. Grosjean attempted to challenge Alonso, but was forced out of the race with an alternator problem seven laps later, leaving Alonso in the lead, four seconds clear of
Lewis Hamilton and
Kimi Räikkönen. As the race entered the final laps, Räikkönen forced his way past Hamilton to secure second place, but
Pastor Maldonado's attempts to take third place ended with Hamilton in the barrier and a broken nose for the
Williams driver. Maldonado finished tenth, but was given a post-race drive-through penalty and was classified twelfth. Meanwhile,
Michael Schumacher and
Mark Webber had started to carve their way through the field by virtue of a late pit stop and easily picked off the minor points positions and taking advantage of the Maldonado—Hamilton collision to finish third and fourth behind Alonso and Räikkönen. It was Schumacher's first podium since the
2006 Chinese Grand Prix. Alonso's win cemented a twenty-point lead in the championship, whilst Vettel's retirement relegated him to fourth overall, twenty-six points behind Alonso.
Round 9 – Great Britain Silverstone Circuit Difficult conditions greeted the teams upon their arrival at the
Silverstone Circuit, as parts of the
Midlands received a month's rainfall in the space of two days. The torrential rain lasted throughout the weekend, forcing qualifying to be suspended for ninety minutes, before race day dawned clear. The circuit was declared dry, allowing the drivers to start on the tyre compound of their choice, with Alonso on the harder tyre streaking away at the start while
Paul di Resta crashed at Aintree on the first lap after making contact with
Romain Grosjean. As the leaders settled into a rhythm,
Pastor Maldonado and
Sergio Pérez collided at Brooklands, prompting an angry response from the Mexican driver. Perez's teammate
Kamui Kobayashi also ran into trouble, locking his tyres as he entered his pit box and hitting three members of his pit crew, though none were seriously injured. The race was ultimately decided by the choice of tyre in the first stint as Alonso moved onto the softer option and Webber onto the harder prime for the final phase of the race. Webber caught Alonso with five laps to go, passing him on the Wellington Straight. Webber held on for his second win of the season, with Vettel third and
Felipe Massa in fourth, his best result since achieving a podium in
South Korea in 2010. The result meant Webber closed to within thirteen points of Alonso's championship lead, with both drivers breaking away from third-placed Vettel. After showing early promise in the wet conditions,
McLaren went backwards in the dry, losing second place in the Constructors' Championship to
Ferrari and third to
Lotus.
Round 10 – Germany Hockenheimring was involved in several technical disputes that
challenged the legality of its car. Limited running in practice and a wet qualifying session meant that teams had to improvise their strategies at the
Hockenheimring.
Fernando Alonso controlled much of the race from pole position, only relinquishing the lead when he pitted, and he went on to take his third victory of the season.
Lewis Hamilton's one hundredth Grand Prix started with a disaster when he picked up a puncture on the third lap and spent most of the race at the tail end of the field before retiring on lap 56 with a suspension problem. Confusion briefly reigned when Hamilton, in seventeenth place at the time, began lapping faster than the leaders and sought to unlap himself.
Sebastian Vettel later claimed that this was a ploy by
McLaren to force both him and Alonso to drive defensively against Hamilton, slowing them down enough to allow team-mate
Jenson Button to leap-frog them at the second round of stops; Vettel lost a position to Button, but Alonso was unaffected, as Ferrari pitted him before Hamilton could interfere with his race. Button briefly looked as if he had the pace to pass Alonso for the race lead, but the race was deadlocked in the final twenty laps, and Button began to fade in the final five laps of the race. The race was marked by another technical dispute regarding
Red Bull Racing, who were referred to the stewards by FIA Technical Delegate
Jo Bauer for what he felt was an illegal engine map in use on the
Red Bull RB8. The stewards elected to take no action against Red Bull, stating that the team had not violated any of the technical regulations, but noted that they did not accept all of the arguments presented by the team when asked to explain. The stewards were less forgiving of Vettel, who ran wide at the hairpin while trying to pass Button and could only complete the pass outside the limits of the circuit. Vettel had twenty seconds added to his race time as a penalty, demoting him to fifth overall. With Button promoted to second,
Kimi Räikkönen inherited third place and
Kamui Kobayashi was classified a then season-best fourth.
Round 11 – Hungary Hungaroring Felipe Massa was in fourteenth place in the championship, 139 points behind team-mate and championship leader
Fernando Alonso. As the championship moved into the second half of the season,
Fernando Alonso maintained a thirty-four-point lead over his nearest rival,
Mark Webber, with
Sebastian Vettel a further ten points behind. Alonso's outlook for the race was dour, qualifying sixth and pinning his hopes on a wet race as
Lewis Hamilton continued
McLaren's mid-season resurgence, returning to pole position for the first time since the Malaysian Grand Prix. Following an aborted start triggered by
Michael Schumacher lining up in the wrong grid position and then shutting his engine off in the confusion, Hamilton and Grosjean lead the field away. After prematurely moving
Jenson Button onto a three-stop strategy, McLaren gave Hamilton the order to hold position as the tight confines of the
Hungaroring circuit forced the teams to try to make up positions in the pits. This was evidenced by
Kimi Räikkönen, who inherited the lead after the first set of stops and produced a series of fast laps that allowed him to rejoin in second, coming dangerously close to team-mate Grosjean under brakes as he emerged from the pit lane. Despite taking two seconds out of Hamilton's lead within five laps of rejoining the race, Räikkönen was powerless to reel Hamilton in any further. Hamilton won the race, the nineteenth of his career, with Räikkönen second and Grosjean in third. Hamilton's victory brought with it twenty-five points that put him back in championship contention, while a late decision by Red Bull to move Mark Webber onto a three-stop strategy saw the Australian slip further behind Fernando Alonso, as the Spaniard extended his championship lead to forty points.
Round 12 – Belgium Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps 's future was a source of ongoing speculation during the second half of the season, amid contract negotiations with
McLaren and
Mercedes. The championship resumed one month later in Belgium. and broke away at the start while a four-car pile-up started behind him when
Romain Grosjean made contact with
Lewis Hamilton and they both slammed into
Fernando Alonso and
Sergio Pérez, eliminating all four on the spot and triggering the safety car.
Kamui Kobayashi's car was also damaged, and
Pastor Maldonado was spun around amidst the chaos. Grosjean was later given a one-race ban for causing the collision, Maldonado retired shortly after the restart with a broken front wing after making contact with
Timo Glock, while
Narain Karthikeyan spun off at Stavelot mid-way through the race when his wheel came loose. Button controlled the race from the front and was unchallenged throughout, while
Sebastian Vettel clawed his way up to second from tenth on the grid.
Kimi Räikkönen started and finished third, let down by a conservative pit strategy that forced him to make a second stop late in the race in order to use both compounds of tyre as per the rules – even when it became apparent that Button and Vettel were racing on a one-stop strategy – and
Nico Hülkenberg finished in a career-best fourth place. Button's win allowed him to regain precious ground on the championship fight, while Alonso's retirement from the race and Vettel's second place moved the reigning World Champion to within twenty-four points of the championship lead.
Scuderia Toro Rosso scored their first points since the
Malaysian Grand Prix, with
Jean-Éric Vergne and
Daniel Ricciardo finishing eighth and ninth respectively. Further down the order,
Caterham was summoned to the stewards on charges of an unsafe pit release when
Heikki Kovalainen was released directly into the path of Karthikeyan and the team was given a €10,000 fine for the incident.
Round 13 – Italy Autodromo Nazionale Monza – seen here at the
2011 Monaco Grand Prix – replaced
Romain Grosjean for the Italian Grand Prix. leaving the championship leader marooned in tenth while
Lewis Hamilton took pole. Hamilton asserted early control over the race, and while Ferrari made significant ground early on to be running second and third – despite losing the data uplink between their cars and the pit wall that provided them with telemetry – it was
Sergio Pérez who proved to be Hamilton's biggest challenge. Starting outside the top ten, Pérez elected to start on the harder compound tyres and complete one stop, producing fastest lap after fastest lap as McLaren's confidence was broken when
Jenson Button's car was paralysed by a fuel pressure problem. Hamilton would ultimately prevail, but he was forced to push in the final few laps to maintain his lead, and won the race by four seconds as Pérez claimed his third podium of the season with second place. Alonso went on to finish third, benefiting from Button's retirement and a drive-through penalty for
Sebastian Vettel when the reigning World Champion forced him so wide through the Curva Grande that Alonso was forced off the circuit.
Bruno Senna later criticised the race stewards for not penalising
Paul di Resta for a similar altercation on the approach to the Variante della Roggia early in the race. Meanwhile, with
Romain Grosjean serving his suspension,
Lotus enlisted former
Marussia F1 driver
Jérôme d'Ambrosio as their second driver for the weekend.
Red Bull Racing suffered a double retirement, with Vettel falling victim to another alternator failure and
Mark Webber spinning violently at the Ascari chicane, with the resultant damage to his tyres sending vibrations through the car that forced him to retire. This allowed Hamilton to leapfrog both drivers and
Kimi Räikkönen – who finished the race fifth – to take second place in the World Drivers' Championship, with the result enabling McLaren to close the gap to Red Bull in the World Constructors' Championship.
Round 14 – Singapore Marina Bay Street Circuit finished in a career-best fourth place in
Singapore. As the teams returned to Asia, the focus shifted to the championship race.
Lewis Hamilton put himself in the ideal position to take the fight to
Fernando Alonso, qualifying on pole whilst Alonso could only manage fifth place. In the physically most demanding race of the year, the teams jostled for position through the first phase of the Grand Prix, trying to position themselves for the final ten laps. Just as the drivers established a rhythm, Hamilton's gearbox failed, forcing him out of the race and handing the lead to
Sebastian Vettel. The race was shortened by two laps to fit the two-hour time limit for a Grand Prix following a pair of lengthy safety car interventions; first,
Narain Karthikeyan understeered into the barriers under the grandstands on lap 30, forcing the safety car to be deployed. The drivers had little opportunity to get comfortable on the restart, as
Michael Schumacher misjudged his braking point at the end of the Esplanade Bridge, careening into the back of
Jean-Éric Vergne and triggering the safety car for the second time in an accident that was a near mirror-image of his collision with
Sergio Pérez in
2011. He was later given a ten-place grid penalty for the
Japanese Grand Prix. Vettel controlled the race from the second restart, beating
Jenson Button to the line, for his second win of the season and his first since the
Bahrain Grand Prix five months previously. Alonso completed the podium, retaining his championship lead after defending from
Paul di Resta late in the race. Elsewhere, a string of retirements – including a late engine problem for
Bruno Senna, which left the Brazilian with minor burns to his back – and a series of altercations involving
Mark Webber,
Nico Hülkenberg,
Kamui Kobayashi and Sergio Pérez as they fought over the minor points positions allowed
Timo Glock to finish twelfth, the result seeing
Marussia retake tenth position in the World Constructors' Championship from
Caterham.
Round 15 – Japan Suzuka International Racing Course (left) was criticised for his role in causing another first-lap incident, this time spinning
Mark Webber around at the start of the race.
Fernando Alonso was the victim of a dramatic first corner clash, spinning out when he made contact with
Kimi Räikkönen and paving the way for his championship rivals to make considerable inroads into his twenty-nine-point championship lead.
Mark Webber was also caught up in the opening lap melee when he was hit by
Romain Grosjean; Webber was forced to pit straight away, while Grosjean was given a ten-second stop-go penalty for causing yet another first lap incident. whilst
Kamui Kobayashi claimed the first podium of his career – and the first podium for a Japanese driver at the
Suzuka Circuit since
Aguri Suzuki finished third in
1990 – after withstanding late pressure from
Jenson Button. With Alonso retiring and Vettel taking a full twenty-five points for victory, the championship fight became as close as it had been all season long.
Round 16 – Korea International Circuit Sebastian Vettel's momentum continued one week later in Korea, winning his third consecutive race and taking a six-point championship lead as
Fernando Alonso finished third. Vettel overcame pole-sitter
Mark Webber at the start, and was aided in building up a lead by first-lap contact between
Jenson Button,
Nico Rosberg and
Kamui Kobayashi that saw Button and Rosberg retire with damage from the collision; Rosberg pulled over on the approach to the third turn, forcing a protracted yellow flag period as marshalls attempted to retrieve his car. With the sporting regulations banning overtaking while yellow flags were shown, the field was effectively thinned out in the opening laps as drivers were unable to pass one another. Tyre management became the focus of the race, as drivers reported heavy graining, particularly on the right-front tyre, which bore most of the load over a lap of the circuit. Vettel ignored six radio calls from his pit wall cautioning him that a tyre failure was imminent, only backing off just enough in the final few laps to secure victory over Webber by six seconds. The team later denied that there had ever been a problem with Vettel's tyres. Further down the order,
Scuderia Toro Rosso's
Jean-Éric Vergne and
Daniel Ricciardo fought their way from sixteenth and twenty-first on the grid to finish eighth and ninth, while
Romain Grosjean drove a conservative race to finish seventh, having been warned beforehand by the stewards that another first-lap altercation would likely result in his disqualification from the race.
Lewis Hamilton's day went from bad to worse when an
anti-roll bar on his
McLaren failed, while the car handled its tyres so poorly that he was forced to make an unscheduled stop in order to make it to the finish, only to tear up a length of
astroturf that wreaked havoc on his downforce and he slid down to tenth place, narrowly fending off an opportunistic charge from
Sergio Pérez to take the final World Championship point on offer. Button's retirement and Hamilton's single point meant that McLaren lost second place in the
World Constructors' Championship to
Ferrari, but whatever advantage they offered was still not enough for
Fernando Alonso to catch
Sebastian Vettel. Vettel dominated the weekend, setting the fastest time in every practice session before qualifying on pole, and leading every lap of the sixty-lap race, though he was denied his third
Grand Chelem when
Jenson Button set the fastest lap of the race on the final lap.
Fernando Alonso finished second, conceding another seven championship points to Vettel. The Ferrari driver rounded up both
McLaren drivers at the start of the race and proceeded to chase down
Mark Webber for second, only overtaking the Australian on the long back straight when his car developed a
KERS fault fifteen laps from the end that it never recovered from. Webber held off a late challenge from
Lewis Hamilton to complete the podium. Further down the order,
Kimi Räikkönen finished seventh after spending most of the race trapped behind
Felipe Massa, and later claimed that mistakes on Saturday had robbed him of a podium on Sunday, while
Pedro de la Rosa retired from the race when he suffered a brake failure that saw him spin into the barriers at Turn 4. The race was marked by a series of explosive punctures after cars made light contact with one another;
Michael Schumacher's right-rear tyre deflated on the first lap when he made contact with
Jean-Éric Vergne at the first corner;
Sergio Pérez suffered a puncture under similar circumstances when he glanced
Daniel Ricciardo's front wing, with the loose rubber damaging the floor of Pérez's car enough that he was forced into retirement; and
Pastor Maldonado also had a tyre punctured when he and
Kamui Kobayashi touched at speed on the approach to Turn 5, forcing the Venezuelan to run wide onto the tarmac run-off, but suffering no lasting damage.
Round 18 – Abu Dhabi Yas Marina Circuit took
Lotus's only victory of the 2012 season in Abu Dhabi after he inherited the lead following
Lewis Hamilton's retirement from the race.
Sebastian Vettel's dominant run was derailed in
Abu Dhabi when his car was found to have insufficient fuel after qualifying and he was subsequently moved to the back of the grid. As
Lewis Hamilton led the race away from the start, Vettel started from pit lane and took advantage of a chaotic opening corner that saw
Nico Hülkenberg,
Paul di Resta,
Romain Grosjean and
Bruno Senna tangle; Hülkenberg was forced out, while di Resta and Grosjean pitted with damage. Vettel began to round up the
HRTs,
Marussias and
Caterhams, but his early progress came at the expense of his front wing endplate when he made contact with Senna at Turn 8 switchback. He chose not to pit for the time being, as the race was interrupted by the intervention of the safety car.
Nico Rosberg, who had been forced to pit with damage to his front wing, was in the process of overtaking
Narain Karthikeyan as Karthikeyan's car began to fail and the Indian quickly slowed. Rosberg, caught unawares by Karthikeyan's troubles, was launched over the back of the HRT and into the barrier. During the safety car period, Vettel was forced to pit when he swerved to avoid
Daniel Ricciardo and crashed into the polystyrene bollard marking the start of the DRS zone, further damaging his wing.
Red Bull Racing took the opportunity to pit him early, with the downside being that Vettel would have to do 42 laps on the soft tyre when supplier
Pirelli predicted they could only do 36. Meanwhile, Hamilton suffered another mechanical failure while leading the race, and was once again forced out, handing the lead to
Kimi Räikkönen while
Fernando Alonso inherited second. Vettel began to work his way through the field again, but was forced to make a second stop when his tyres started losing grip. He was saved by the second appearance of the safety car moments later, brought about when di Resta forced
Sergio Pérez wide; as Pérez rejoined the circuit, he cut back across the front of Grosjean and the two made contact, which in turn forced Grosjean into the path of
Mark Webber. Grosjean and Webber retired, whilst Pérez was given a stop-go penalty. When racing resumed, Räikkönen began to rebuild his lead over Alonso, who was being harried by
Jenson Button; Button himself was being harried by Vettel in fourth. Button and Vettel's duel allowed Alonso to break free, and he started chasing down Räikkönen in the last five laps. Räikkönen held on to secure his – and
Lotus F1's – only victory of the season. keeping a ten-point championship lead in the process. With both Alonso and Vettel finishing on the podium with him, Räikkönen's win was not enough to keep him in contention for the World Drivers' Championship, leaving the title to be fought out between Alonso and Vettel over the final two races of the season.
Sebastian Vettel took his sixth pole position of the season, whilst Alonso struggled throughout qualifying to start the race ninth, which became eighth when
Romain Grosjean received a grid penalty for an unscheduled gearbox change. Amid concerns that drivers starting from even-numbered grid slots would suffer from a lack of grip as they were located off the racing line,
Ferrari deliberately broke the seal on
Felipe Massa's gearbox, thereby giving him a five-place grid penalty and promoting Alonso to seventh and the clean side of the grid. Ferrari's fears were not without merit as the drivers starting from even-number spaces fell behind at the start of the race. Vettel quickly converted pole position into a steady race lead as
Lewis Hamilton fought to regain second place from
Mark Webber. Moments after Hamilton caught him on lap 17, the Australian suffered yet another alternator problem, and coasted to a halt.
Red Bull Racing team principal
Christian Horner later admitted that the team's perpetual alternator problems were a serious concern with just one race left in the championship, a World Championship at stake and very little time to diagnose and correct the problem. With Webber now out of the running, Hamilton then turned his attentions on Vettel and steadily closed the gap to the lead, overtaking the World Championship leader on lap 42 when Vettel got caught behind
Narain Karthikeyan in the meandering first sector, which allowed Hamilton to pass Vettel along the long back straight. Hamilton held onto the lead for the final fourteen laps, but with Vettel never more than a second and a half behind him, Hamilton could not afford to relax, and he won the race by just six-tenths of a second. Alonso recovered from seventh to finish third – marking the first time that he, Hamilton and Vettel had stood on the podium together in the one hundred races all three had contested together – and forcing the title fight to extend to the
final round in Brazil. Further down the order, Massa overcame his gearbox penalty to finish fourth, while
Jenson Button fell from twelfth on the grid to sixteenth at the end of the first lap, using an alternative strategy to claw his way back up to fifth.
Michael Schumacher, on the other hand, went backwards; after qualifying fifth, his
Mercedes chewed through its tyres, forcing him to make a second stop that sent him plummeting down the order to finish sixteenth, and a clutch problem during his stop deprived
Kimi Räikkönen of the chance to compete with Alonso for the final podium place. Both
Marussia drivers out-qualified the
Caterhams for the first time, only for
Timo Glock and
Charles Pic be out-raced by
Heikki Kovalainen and
Vitaly Petrov, but the Russian team held onto tenth place in the World Constructors' Championship. Despite losing Webber to an alternator failure, Red Bull collected enough points to secure their third consecutive World Constructors' Championship title. The race was one of attrition, with
Pastor Maldonado and
Romain Grosjean also crashing out early. Button seized the lead from Hamilton, but soon found himself under pressure from
Nico Hülkenberg and lost the lead to the German driver on lap 18, and second place to Hamilton shortly thereafter. The field stabilised themselves after the first round of stops, with Vettel in the lower points and
Fernando Alonso running fourth when he needed a podium to stand any chance of being champion. Hülkenberg spun on lap 48 and lost the lead to Hamilton, but caught the McLaren on lap 54 as they encountered lapped traffic. The two made contact in the first corner, forcing Hamilton out of the race and earning Hülkenberg a drive-through penalty for causing an avoidable accident. In the wake of their collision, Button re-took the lead and held on to the end of the race. Meanwhile, the rain intensified, prompting teams to scramble for tyres. Hülkenberg's penalty and Hamilton's retirement promoted Alonso to the podium, which became second place when team-mate
Felipe Massa yielded for him. A slow stop for Vettel relegated him to twelfth and swinging the balance of power in Alonso's favour. In the last ten laps of the race, Vettel began to make his way back up the order until he was seventh, just enough to secure the title, but leaving him vulnerable if the damage he received on the first lap – which by now had left a long crack running along the floor of his car – got worse. Vettel's seventh became sixth when
Michael Schumacher moved aside to let Vettel through. Two laps from the end of the race,
Paul di Resta crashed heavily as he came onto the main straight, forcing the deployment of the safety car. Button won the race, with Alonso second and Massa third, but Vettel's sixth place was enough to secure his third consecutive
World Drivers' Championship.
Kimi Räikkönen finished the season third overall, having benefited from Hamilton's retirement to hold onto the place following a bizarre incident in which he left the circuit and attempted to rejoin by taking to the support paddock pit lane, only to find the way blocked and forcing him to double back and find another way onto the circuit. In his final race in Formula One, Schumacher's seventh place saw him finish the season in thirteenth place overall; his worst performance over a season since he contested six rounds during the season. In the
World Constructors' Championship,
Ferrari secured second place from
McLaren with two cars on the podium, while
Kamui Kobayashi's ninth place was not enough for
Sauber to take fifth from
Mercedes, and
Marussia lost tenth place to
Caterham when
Vitaly Petrov secured the team's best result of the season with eleventh place.
Nikolai Fomenko, Marussia's director of engineering, later claimed that
Charles Pic had deliberately let Petrov through, as Pic had announced his move to Caterham for the season two days before the race.
Post-season controversy Three days after the
Brazilian Grand Prix, reports began to surface suggesting that
Sebastian Vettel's championship was under threat and that
Ferrari would be filing a formal protest against the race results. The challenge centred on a pass Vettel made on
Jean-Éric Vergne early in the race. At the time, the first sector of the circuit was under yellow flag conditions following the spin and retirement of
Pastor Maldonado at Curva do Sol, the
Interlagos circuit's third corner, which feeds onto the back straight. Vettel overtook Vergne along the straight, which led to claims that the pass was illegal because of the yellow flags. Intense media speculation suggested that the challenge threatened Vettel's championship because as the race finished behind the safety car, any post-race penalty had the potential to demote him in the race standings, and Vettel would not have enough points to secure the title. Ferrari wrote to the
FIA, requesting clarification on the matter. The FIA reviewed the incident and declared that Vettel's pass was legal as a green flag was being shown by a marshal adjacent to the pit exit, meaning the track was green from that point onward; the confusion had been caused by a digital board showing a yellow flag on the exit of Curva do Sol some one hundred metres before the marshalling post. Both Ferrari and
Red Bull Racing announced that they were satisfied with the ruling, thereby preserving Vettel's championship. ==Results and standings==