F1 Update from the iSport F1 Pitstop: Sebastian Vettel will once again (unsurprisingly this season) start the inaugural Indian Grand Prix from pole position. He will be lining up alongside teammate Mark Webber, after Lewis Hamilton dropped from 2nd to 5th on the grid because of his 3-place penalty during the practice session yesterday. iSporter Sahil Bhalla reports
This is Sebastian Vettel’s 13th pole of the season. He is now tied with the greats of Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost for the most pole positions in a season. He s only one behind the all-time record held by Nigel Mansell in the 1992 season. Red Bull on the other hand, got their 16th pole position of the season, which is a new team record. The previous record was held by McLaren, Williams and Red Bull, each having 15 pole positions in different seasons..
Fernando Alonso will line up on the second row alongside Jenson Button. Then, next to Hamilton is Felipe Massa who spectacularly crashed in the final minutes of qualifying. With most of the teams still unsure of a strategy or wanting to conserve the softer of the tyre compounds, most elected to use the harder option tyre at the start of Q1. The harder of the tyre compounds though struggled to maintain grip and many drivers were running wide and messing up the track for the others. Big names like Hamilton and Massa drove wide during Q1.
Force India's Sutil had little problems and made it all the way to Q3 where he will start from 8th position on the grid. Button and Schumi made a smart decision to change to the softer compound tyre to avoid being a big scalp during Q1, and both made it through on their final laps. In Q2 though, the Torro Rosso drivers outpaced Michael Schumacher (who will start from 11th on the grid) and sneaked into Q3. Paul di Resta who had made the last two Q3’s, missed out this time along with both the Renaults. Vitaly Petrov got a five-place penalty for running into Schumacher in Korea. He will be starting in 16th position.
The final session produced no drama until the final laps of the session. As expected, Vettel outpaced Hamilton and Alonso as always, satisfied with where he qualified, which was 3rd. The big damper came for Ferrari when on his last lap of the session; Massa smashed his front suspension on turn 8. It went right across the track before crashing into the barriers.
Behind the top 10 come, Schumacher, di Resta, Maldonado, Senna, Barrichello, Petrov, Kobayashi, Kovalainen, Truli, Perez, d’Ambrosio, Glock, Ricciardo and Karthikeyan.
The HRT due had actually out qualified both the virgins but because of penalties, they will both start from the back of the grid. Karthikeyan racing again after being replaced a number of races ago was only .22 seconds behind his teammate Daniel Ricciardo. He is also the home favorite so expect for him to at least finish the race, somewhere in the top 20.
I’m looking forward to an exciting inaugural Indian Grand Prix. Hopefully, it’ll live up to all the excitement and a lot of overtaking, especially with the two DRS zones. Wait till tomorrow and we might have a completely different winner!
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