2013: Vettel jeered by crowd after Singapore win

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This day in 2013 saw Red Bull driver Sebastian Vettel take a convincing victory in the sixth running of the Singapore Grand Prix night race.

Having clinched pole in qualifying on Saturday, Vettel went on to lead every lap of the race and set the fastest lap for good measure. He finished over half a minute clear of Ferrari's Fernando Alonso, who in turn had ten seconds in hand over Kimi Raikkonen who was then driving for Lotus.

The Singapore result put Vettel 60 points ahead of Alonso in the drivers championship, with Mercedes' Lewis Hamilton a further 36 points behind. That wasn't enough for Vettel to seal his fourth title that weekend, but in the end it was a mere formality with Red Bull also thundering to another constructors title.

However Vettel's domination - both in Singapore and in the sport as a whole that season - wasn't going down well with fans, and there was pronounced booing and jeering during the podium ceremony.

There had been booing the week before at Spa, but that was in part a protest about F1's environmental impact. This time it was firmly directed at one of the drivers on the podium.

It was bad enough that Sky Sports presenter Martin Brundle even broke off from the post-race interviews to admonish the crowd: "That's not correct," he frowned. But Vettel himself just shrugged off the negativity,

"As long as they keep booing we're doing a very good job, that's the way I see it," Vettel said. "Obviously I didn't give them the most exciting race. But on days like this, I really don't mind."

"It's normal in sports. When people support one driver they don't like another driver to win, equally there were a lot of German flags round the track."

A lot of the booing came from frustrated Ferrari fans - who ironically soon became Vettel's biggest supporters when he moved to Maranello in 2015.

More recently it's been Mercedes who have been in dominant form in the sport. And so not surprisingly it's been Lewis Hamilton at the receiving end of boos and jeers from the passionate Tifosi.

"While the negativity is never great, that's what powered me along," he said, having been booed on the podium after snatching victory from Ferrari at Monza earlier this month. "It encourages me. It energises me.

"It doesn't offend me. There's nothing to get offended by. I don't think too much about it, I just keep smiling."

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.