Tag Archives: qualifying

Australian GP Qualifying, Sebastien Vettel takes pole for Red Bull again

The qualifying session for the Australian GP started with traffic problems as the new slower cars tried to get out of the way of the fast cars on the shorter track. The weather was also threatening for the whole session as the teams scrambled to avoid being caught out. It was the Red Bull team that put down a marker though with Sebastien Vettel taking pole and Mark Webber locking out the front row in an ominous fashion .
Session 1
The first part of qualifying saw the elimination of all the new cars though the Lotus cars performed the best of those. Vitaly Petrov joined the new cars that were knocked out of the session as he struggled to get to grips with the Albert Park circuit.
Session 2
The second session saw all the teams getting times in to make sure that they avoided any weather problems, the only real surprise is [...]

Will the words ‘Red Wash’ be spoken this year given the Ferraris performance in Bahrain?

The Ferraris put on a good show in Bahrain, they we’re surprised to see Sebastien Vettel take pole and I suspect that they may have had a little more to give had they thought he could put the Red Bull there. In the race they were reeling in the Red Bull before he had his problem and it seems that they were so much faster once released, it may have been a matter of time until they passed anyway, given that no one else seemed close could we have seen the first race of another so called ‘Red Wash’ season?
I think from the second that Ferrari chose to give up on the 2009 car there has been the distinct possibility that 2010 would be a Ferrari year, they have poured more time and effort into the 2010 car than anyone else on the grid and given their technical capability that [...]

On the ’second’ drivers and what a difference a year makes to F1

With the first race of the year now behind us and the first points on the board it seems that Michael Schumacher may be wishing he’s driving a Ferrari this year after all; I’m not sure that he’d want to be up against Alonso though as he struggled to keep pace with Rosberg.
The second set of drivers – by this I mean Massa, Rosberg and Webber though unless he improves will soon include Button – put on an interesting show on Sunday, Rosberg beat Schumacher, Webber was beaten by Vettel and Massa out-qualified Alonso but was beaten down to the first corner.
Nico Rosberg seems to have had the measure of Michael Schumacher all weekend and underlined that by beating him in the race. There is more to this though, firstly Michael Schumacher was some 0.5s off Rosberg’s pace in qualifying but only finished 4s behind him, there are two other [...]

What can we expect form HRT Cosworth today?

HRT Cosworth or Hispania Racing have made it to the first GP, they’ve managed to get both cars out on track – just – and have got both drivers into the race. Bruno Senna had much more running that Karun Chandhok who just got two runs in qualifying and so did amazingly well to get as close to Senna as he did.
The team have has a few dramas over the weekend with the hydraulics issues that they’ve had with Chandhok’s car and the issue with the wheel nut on Senna’s car at the end of practice on Friday. These type of issues are to be expected from such a new team really and as Chandhok says is the problem when they are forced to conduct what is essentailly a shakedown in public.
So what can we expect from them in the race? I think that we may have to expect [...]