With all the various penalties that various drivers received Williams F1 drivers Pastor Maldonado and Bruno Senna would start from fifth and fourteenth respectively. Prior to the start it was dry but with the teams having so little dry weather running it may be a race that see drivers having to adapt to the race conditions. On pole was Alonso from Vettel, Schumacher, Hulkenberg, Pastor, Button, Hamilton, Webber, Di Resta, and Raikkonen in tenth. The drivers will have the choice of the medium and soft tyres with the drivers taking on various combinations of the dry weather tyre for the start. Soft tyres looked like it was the choice of the field the only ones of the medium tyre were Rosberg, Vergne, Glock, and Pic.

The grid would move away for their parade lap with Pastor on the soft tyre as was Bruno. The grid would form up and the lights would go out and it was Alonso leading from Vettel and Schumacher. Hamilton was very slow as Button passed Pastor seeing him sixth. Hulkenberg was fourth and Button fifth. Bruno had lost one place and was fifteenth. As the cars came through Turn one there was carbon fibre over the track and it was found that the debris came from Massa who pitted to get his nose changed. Other drivers to pit were Grosjean and Bruno. Hamilton was struggling and down in eighth. It was a left rear puncture seeing him drive slowly back to the pits. Lap three and Vettel was just 0.3 behind Alonso with the DRS enabled. Hamilton would pit getting new medium tyres. Schumacher was still third but 2.9 seconds behind Vettel.