Sebastian Vettel in the Red bull claimed pole and the rest of the top 10 was made up of the usual suspects with no huge surprises, but a left a few more questions.
- Biggest thing may be Schumacher being beaten once again by Rosberg. The difference between the two Mercedes drivers was rather consistent, about 0.3 seconds across the three qualifying sessions.
- Same story at McLaren, Hamilton was a consistent 0.3-0.4 seconds ahead of Button in all three parts of qualifying.
- Ferrari was 2nd and 3rd with Massa beating Alonso by 0.35 in the final session. Looking at times over the last two days these two are very, very close with Q3 being the biggest split between the two.
Unsurprisingly the three new teams occupying the last six positions and never made it out of the first qualifying session.
- For the first time the two Lotuses were not the fastest of the new-boys, that particular honour went to Timo Glock in the Virgin GP car. Having said that he was still more than 3.5 seconds from making it into Q2, which gives an idea of the huge gap in performance.
- Not surprising was the Hispania cars at the bottom of the time sheets. Chandhok was slowest, but considering the first time he’s driven the car was at the start of this qualifying session, being only 1.7 down on his teammate is a somewhat respectable performance from the inexperienced Indian driver.
- Williams and the three new teams share the same engine supplier, and Williams did OK qualifying 11th and 13th. That shows the engine is not the issue and that chassis development and experience is the major difference.
Yes this is only qualifying and no points were given out today. In my experience, every driver considers his own teammate as the most important opposition to keep track of; after all they are the only people on the grid with the same basic equipment. I’m trying to highlight what I see as the important battles this weekend and it’s shaping up to be as good as I hoped.
Schumacher has a bigger question mark over his comeback than ever after being consistently beaten by Rosberg over the last couple of days. Michael has picked up a couple of tenths of a second on Rosberg when compared to yesterday, but I don’t think too many people thought he would be in this position today.