Pole: Sebastian Vettel, Red Bull
The first qualifying session of 2010 was a slightly surprising one.
Q1 and Q2 were pretty much what everyone expected, with the new teams (Hispania Racing, Virgin and Lotus) all out at the end of Q1, and Q2 saw the likes of Barichello in the Williams, Buemi in the Toro Rosso and Kobayashi in the Sauber all out, as well as the other “obvious” midfielders.
However, Q1, the session everyone was looking to for the first real indication of the cars’ pace surprised a lot of people (except the Red Bull team who seem to have been sandbagging throughout winter testing), as Vettel stormed to pole position, with quite a sizeable chunk of time over the Ferraris.
The big four that everyone had predicted from testing – McLaren, Mercedes, Ferrari and Red Bull – were all in the top 10 shoot-out, with Massa and Alonso lining up behind Vettel in 2nd and 3rd place respectively, with Alonso lining up next to 4th placed Hamilton. Button, however could only manage 8th, and both McLaren drivers were speaking about their concerns over the car’s “lack of pace” after the session. Nothing major then.
Nico Rosberg surprised a lot of people, not least his esteemed team-mate, by out-qualifying Michael Schumacher by around half a second. Schumacher was reported as saying he felt “rusty” over one lap after Friday’s practice sessions, and it showed in his Qualifying pace. He was fairly gracious about it in the post-session interviews but it was clear he was less than happy – whether that was with himself or the car in general remains to be seen. Although Rosberg ended up higher on the grid, in fifth, it still seems people are expecting Schumacher (7th) to out-perform Nico in the race tomorrow. I’m not so sure.
Webber had the speed to have lined up with Vettel on the first row but for a mistake on his last flying lap which left him 6th.
So, in a way, Sebastian Vettel grabbing pole was unexpected – it seemed as if everyone was putting their money on one of the Ferraris, but it’s still quite comforting to know that the top 8 positions are taken by the “Big Four”, as was predicted after testing. So we haven’t all lost our spidey-senses when it comes to F1 predictions.
In other Sutil-News (I think I might make this a regular feature, as I am growing more and more fond of him), he rounded off the top-10 nicely in his increasingly more impressive-looking Force India.
