2013 Formula One World Championship

The 2013 FIA Formula One World Championship was the 67th season of FIA Formula One motor racing. It featured the 64th FIA Formula One World Championship, a motor racing series for Formula One cars, recognised by the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile – the governing body of motorsport – as the highest class of competition for open-wheel racing cars. Eleven teams and twenty-three drivers contested the nineteen Grands Prix that made up the calendar for the 2013 season, with the winning driver being crowned the World Drivers' Champion and the winning team the World Constructors' Champions. The season started in Australia on 17 March 2013 and ended in Brazil on 24 November 2013.
The 2013 season was the final year the series used the 2.4-litre V8 engine configuration which was introduced in and for naturally-aspirated engines in general having been mandatory since as a 1.6-litre turbocharged hybrid V6 engine formula came into force for.
Sebastian Vettel successfully defended his World Championship, winning his fourth consecutive title in the fourth to last race of 2013. In doing so he became the third driver in Formula One's sixty-four years to win four consecutive World Drivers' Championships. It was one of the most dominant championship victories in the sport and the last won by a Red Bull driver until 2021 with Max Verstappen, it remains the last for a Renault-powered driver, as of 2025. Vettel won the championship by a then-record 155 points, which was broken 10 years later by Max Verstappen. Vettel's 2013 season performance additionally saw him recognised by the Laureus World Sports Awards as the Sportsman of the Year, the second racing driver to be so recognised. He became the fourth driver to win at least four titles along with Alain Prost, Juan Manuel Fangio and Michael Schumacher.
Vettel tied Schumacher's season record of 13 race wins and closed out the year with nine consecutive victories. 2013 would turn out to be the end of his title run, with Vettel remaining at four titles until his retirement in 2022. Fernando Alonso finished second in the championship for Ferrari for the third time in four seasons, which would also be the last time he would win a race or end up on the championship podium for at least nine years. Vettel's team Red Bull Racing, with the assistance of his teammate Mark Webber, successfully defended their World Constructors' Championship at the same race as their lead driver secured his title. Webber, who competed in his final season in Formula One, finished third before announcing his retirement having amassed nine Grand Prix wins across his twelve seasons in Formula One.
This was also the last year that the largely Constructors' Championship-based car numbering system introduced in 1996 was used. From 2014 drivers would be allowed to pick a permanent car number between 2 and 99 for their whole career.

Teams and drivers

The following teams and drivers were contracted to drive in the 2013 season, following ratification of a new Concorde Agreement. At the 2012 Malaysian Grand Prix, Bernie Ecclestone announced that the "majority" of teams competing in the season had agreed to compete in 2013, though he gave no indication of which teams—if any—were offering resistance to the new Concorde Agreement. At the 2012 British Grand Prix, Ecclestone announced that every team had agreed "in principle" to the terms of the new Concorde Agreement, and the final draft of the Concorde Agreement was presented to the teams ahead of the 2012 Indian Grand Prix.
On 30 November 2012, the FIA published a provisional entry list for the 2013 season. The final entry list was published on 3 March 2013. All teams competed with tyres supplied by Pirelli.

Entrant

Constructor

Chassis

Engine

Race drivers

Rounds

Free practice drivers

Six drivers participated in free practice sessions as third or test drivers.

Team changes

In November 2012, Thesan Capital, the owners of HRT Formula 1 Team, announced that they were putting the team up for sale. The team needed to find a buyer by 30 November—the date by which entry fees for the 2013 were due to be paid—or else face closure and a departure from the sport. Thesan Capital failed to find a buyer in time, and HRT was omitted from the 2013 entry list. The team was later reported to be in liquidation, and despite bids to purchase and revive the team under a new name, their assets were ultimately sold to Teo Martín, the owner of a firm specialising in recycling automotive parts.

Driver changes

Upon starting his second career in, Michael Schumacher signed a three-year agreement to race for Mercedes AMG. With that deal expiring at the end of the season, Schumacher was given the option of renewing his contract with the team for 2013. However, in the face of disappointing results over the past three seasons, Schumacher became indecisive about his future, prompting Mercedes to start searching for a new driver. Following a protracted period of negotiation, World Champion Lewis Hamilton announced that he would join Mercedes for the next three years. The move ended his fourteen-year association with McLaren, and Hamilton later described his decision to change teams as being motivated by the desire to find a new challenge for himself, and that the idea of taking a struggling team and building them up to become a successful one held more appeal to him than "cruising around with a great team". Schumacher ultimately announced that he would be retiring from the sport for the second time at the end of the 2012 season.
With Hamilton leaving McLaren, the team sought out Sauber driver Sergio Pérez to replace him. Pérez was previously a member of the Ferrari Driver Academy, and was considered to be the leading candidate to join Ferrari should a vacant seat become available, but said that although he had talked with the team, he had never considered racing for them to be a realistic proposition, adding that McLaren was the best place for him to go.
Nico Hülkenberg left Force India after just one season, despite having originally signed a multi-year deal to race for the team starting in 2012, to fill the vacant seat at Sauber. Hülkenberg was joined by Esteban Gutiérrez, who had previously served as Sauber's testing and reserve driver in and whilst campaigning in the GP2 Series. Hülkenberg's place at Force India was taken by Adrian Sutil, who returned to the team after a season out of the sport.
With Hülkenberg and Gutiérrez joining Sauber, Kamui Kobayashi was left without a seat after three seasons with the Swiss team. In a bid to secure a seat, Kobayashi accepted donations from fans to raise as much money as possible. However, shortly after Lotus F1 announced that they would retain Romain Grosjean, Kobayashi announced that he had given up hope of securing a racing seat for the 2013 season. He later joined AF Corse for the 2013 FIA World Endurance Championship. However, he returned to the Formula 1 grid in with Caterham.
Williams promoted test and reserve driver Valtteri Bottas to a full-time racing seat alongside Pastor Maldonado, replacing Bruno Senna. Bottas, the 2011 GP3 Series champion, made regular appearances for Williams during the season, in official practice sessions at fifteen Grands Prix. Faced with the loss of his seat, Bruno Senna initially sought a drive with Force India, but instead moved to the World Endurance Championship, joining Aston Martin Racing.
Charles Pic moved from Marussia to Caterham, joining former GP2 Series teammate Giedo van der Garde. Pic and van der Garde had previously raced alongside one another as teammates in 2011, racing for Barwa Addax. Where Pic joined Marussia for the season, van der Garde became Caterham's test driver and contested the 2012 GP2 Series with their GP2 team before being promoted to Formula One. As a result of this, Caterham's 2012 drivers, Heikki Kovalainen and Vitaly Petrov lost their seats for 2013. Caterham team principal Cyril Abiteboul later said that the relationship between the team and Kovalainen had fallen apart towards the end of the 2012 season, leading to his dismissal from the team, whilst Petrov lost his seat due to a lack of sponsorship. Kovalainen later returned to the team to take part in free practice sessions on a temporary basis.
Timo Glock was initially signed to compete for Marussia until the end of the 2014 season, but later announced that he would be leaving the team. Marussia team principal John Booth cited "tough economic conditions" as the reason for the team being forced to let Glock go, whilst Glock referenced the loss of tenth place in the 2012 World Constructors' Championship to Caterham at the 2012 Brazilian Grand Prix as the first sign that his position with the team was in danger. Glock moved to the Deutsche Tourenwagen Masters, driving for BMW. With Glock gone, the team elected to take two rookie drivers: Max Chilton, who spent the 2012 season competing in the GP2 Series with the Marussia-backed Carlin team; and GP2 Series runner-up Luiz Razia. However, Razia was removed from Marussia's testing line-up for the second pre-season test in Barcelona, leading to speculation that his future with the team was in jeopardy. It was later reported that his sponsors had missed payments to the team, prompting the decision to suspend his testing programme. His contract to race was terminated twenty-three days after it had been announced, and Razia was replaced by 2009 Formula 3 Euro Series champion and 2012 Formula Renault 3.5 Series runner-up Jules Bianchi.
With HRT withdrawing from the championship, Pedro de la Rosa and Narain Karthikeyan were left without full-time racing seats. De la Rosa later joined Ferrari to aid the team in developing their simulator and was confirmed as one of their test and reserve drivers before the first pre-season test in Jerez, while Karthikeyan began contesting Auto GP.