Vettel dedicates win in memory of Prof Sid Watkins
Sebastian Vettel was delighted with his win in the 2012 F1 Grand Prix of Singapore at Marina Bay, saying that he was "just incredibly happy and proud because this is a such a tough race."
But more importantly, he wanted to dedicate the day's victory in the memory of a man with a very special place in the history of F1 and motorsport around the world.
"It's great to get the win today," he said. "I'd like to dedicate it to Professor Sid Watkins. It's thanks to all the work he did to bring safety advancements to the sport that we can race on circuits like this."
Calling the Prof "one very, very special man", Vettel continued: "I think he is one of the biggest reasons we can go out on a circuit like this and enjoy ourselves and be reasonably safe. He pushed the boundaries in terms of safety for all of us, so a big thank you to him."
A one minute silence had been held before the start of the race to mark the passing of Professor Watkins on September 12, aged 84.
Moving on to the events of Sunday's race, Vettel insisted that he'd taken no pleasure when he saw Lewis Hamilton retire with gearbox failure on lap 23 of the gruelling two-hour race.
"Lewis had to retire which is a shame for him," he said. "I know how it feels and have been in that position before."
Red Bull team boss Christian Horner echoed Vettel's thoughts. "It was unfortunate for Lewis to retire from the lead, we know how that feels and it's never a good feeling."
Hamilton had seemingly been having an easy time of it in the race lead up to that point, but Vettel was confident that he would have made things tougher for the McLaren driver later in the race.
"I think we could have had a tight battle," he said. "I felt very good on the harder tyres and we had a lot of pace. I think it's very good to get this win here today. We know the next few races will be tough, but that's the challenge."
Horner pointed out that Vettel "had tremendous pace all weekend" and that the race was no where near as clear cut in McLaren's favour as the opening laps made it seem.
"It's a shame in some respects, as I'm sure they'd have had a great race over the remainder of the grand prix," Horner said.
As for Mark Webber's run to tenth place - later revised to 11th after he picked up a penalty for going outside the track limits to pass Kamui Kobayashi - Horner admitted that the second safety car period caused by Michael Schumacher's collision with Jean-Eric Vergne has proved very costly.
"With Mark we elected to go onto a three-stop strategy and it was working reasonably well," said Horner. "Then his strategy was destroyed with the second safety car ... We had to pit him from there to get him to the end of the race, which dropped him back."
