2012 Indian Grand Prix

The 2012 Indian Grand Prix (formally known as the 2012 Formula 1 Airtel Indian Grand Prix) was a Formula One motor race held on 28 October 2012 at the Buddh International Circuit in Greater Noida, Uttar Pradesh, India. The race was the seventeenth round of the 2012 championship, and marked the second running of the Indian Grand Prix.

Sebastian Vettel started the race from pole position. Vettel won the race for the second consecutive year, but despite leading every lap of the race, he was denied a Grand Slam when Jenson Button set the fastest lap of the race. The organisers of the race invited sport shooter Gagan Narang, who won a bronze medal for India at the London Olympics, to wave the chequered flag. Fernando Alonso and Mark Webber completed the podium by finishing second and third.

Sergio Pérez was taken ill ahead of the race, forcing Sauber to run test and reserve driver Esteban Gutiérrez in his place for the first free practice session. Pérez was able to return to the car for the second practice session. Valtteri Bottas once again ran in place of Bruno Senna at Williams, while Giedo van der Garde drove Heikki Kovalainen's Caterham.

Ferrari was the centre of controversy over the course of the weekend when they displayed the flag of the Italian Navy on the nose of the F2012 in support of the Italian sailors held by Indian authorities over a shooting incident that resulted in the deaths of two Indian fishermen in February 2012.

Tyre supplier Pirelli brought its silver-banded hard compound tyre as the harder "prime" tyre and the yellow-banded soft compound tyre as the softer "option" tyre.

Following track invasions by stray dogs in 2011, race organisers took precautions by installing ultrasonic devices around the circuit to deter animals from accessing the circuit.

The first practice session was run without incident. Sebastian Vettel set the fastest time, despite having spent most of the ninety minutes of the session in his garage. Jenson Button was second, three-tenths of a second behind Vettel, with Fernando Alonso in third, a further tenth of a second behind. Vettel was fastest in the second session as well, setting a time one tenth of a second faster than teammate Mark Webber and six-tenths of a second faster than Fernando Alonso. The under-used surface of the circuit caused problems for several drivers, with Felipe Massa, Romain Grosjean, and Bruno Senna all spinning throughout the session, though all three were able to continue running without forcing the suspension of the session. Vettel was once again fastest in the third practice session, two-tenths faster than Button and Webber.

Force India ensured that their cars were first on track for the first part of Saturday's qualifying session. Kimi Räikkönen, Felipe Massa and Bruno Senna set the early pace while the Red Bulls and McLarens stayed in the garage waiting for the track to become more grippy once rubber had been laid down. Ferrari attempted to improve Fernando Alonso's lap time by making Massa run in front of him on the straight so he could use the slipstream to gain extra top speed. Alonso's lap, however, was not faster than Massa's and the drafting idea was not used later in qualifying, presumably because it did not work. Massa was on a quick lap after this, but accelerated too much out of a corner and spun his car around; he recovered and returned to the pits. Once the Red Bulls and McLarens had set their lap times, the Toro Rosso of Jean-Éric Vergne was left in eighteenth and therefore not within the top seventeen slots times required to make the next qualifying session. He set a lap time, but it was only good enough to move up one place. His teammate, Daniel Ricciardo, was the driver who progressed to Q2 himself when he pushed Vergne back into the eighteenth qualifying slot. Once again, the Caterhams, Marrusias and HRTs occupied the three final rows of the grid. Vitaly Petrov, whose car had needed some last-minute repair just before the session had begun, qualified in nineteenth place and his teammate Heikki Kovalainen ended up twentieth after spinning the car round on his final lap and running back across the track before getting stuck in the gravel. Narain Karthikeyan qualified in twenty-third place for his home Grand Prix, just one-thousandth of a second slower than Pedro de la Rosa. The Marussia cars of Timo Glock and Charles Pic ended up twenty-first and twenty-fourth, and last, respectively. Every car excluding the Red Bulls, McLarens, Ferraris and Lotuses used the softer compound 'option' tyre in the session. Williams driver Pastor Maldonado set the session's fastest time.