In the middle of a personal mess I was soooo delighted and overwhelmingly happy that the Spanish GP weekend was finally here! I had an exceptional GP Saturday though because I was unable to watch the qualifying live on TV. My sister-in-law held a birthday party for their two kids today so I went there with my sons. I have to admit that I felt pretty anxious drinking coffee and checking the clock which was about half past three... I knew there was (hopefully) intense battle going on and I could just hope things would work out well for Sebastian and Kimi... I could hardly wait to get home and watch the recorded qualifying session! And I do have to say the qualifying session at Circuit de Catalunya turned out to be something against ALL ODDS!
Q1 was kind of a typical one. What was conspicuous though was the difference between the performance of the Williams drivers. Maldonado snatched P5 while his team-mate Senna was knocked out of Q2 being 18th! Senna had a good chance to improve his lap time in his last run but he went wide and that was the end of it for him! Not the first mistake that Senna has made! He clearly has difficulties to reach the same level as his Venezuelan team-mate has. I wouldn´t wonder if Frank Williams decided to give the promising young Finn Valtteri Bottas a chance to prove what he´s capable of at the wheel of Williams... Bottas has showed he has the speed by being faster than his team-mate in the free practice sessions on several Fridays. I´m convinced Bottas would deliver better than Senna. Bottas is also a real racing driver who doesn´t need to pay for his seat so I do hope he´ll get a chance to show his talent during this season!
Q2 was an omen I have to say. I mean we have seen various names topping the timesheets after Q2 but where on earth did Pastor Maldonado come from?? He was the fastest man on the track. Surprises didn´t end there. Both Button and Webber were out of Q3! During the whole weekend Button has been complaining about a serious understeering problem but I was still surprised that he couldn´t make it to the Q3. Webber on the other hand made only one run at the beginning of Q2 and his time wasn´t simply fast enough. In terms of the pace of the team-mates it was Ferrari which caught my eye in Q2. Alonso was surprisingly quick be reaching P6 while his constantly under-performing team-mate Massa was out of Q3. I can´t help wondering how long Massa is allowed to continue his lousy efforts in the team until he will be replaced... It should have been done ages ago already!
Q3 was full of unpredicted surprises! Before the qually I predicted it would be either Hamilton or Vettel on pole at Barcelona so Hamilton conquering pole was no surprise at all. But Maldonado in his Williams completing the front row... Whaaat?!? I was aware that many teams had major upgrades for their cars at Barcelona but Williams making such a step forward can really be considered almost a miracle! And Alonso qualified in P3 which I really couldn´t see coming! It seems Ferrari has caught up quite a bit at least in terms of one driver... Lotus was strong again. Grosjean qualified 4th and Kimi 5th. But Vettel... where was he? He started two time laps but finished neither one of them which made him 8th on the grid because Schumacher didn´t set a lap time at all and Kobayashi had a technical issue at the end of Q2. After the qualifying Vettel stated that the decision not to set a lap time was made because it allows him a free choice of tyres for tomorrow´s race... I have to say as a passionate fan of Seb I´m disappointed with this! The tyre tactics play too significant a role in qualifying nowadays! I would have wanted to know how fast Sebastian would really have been!
After setting his pole lap Hamilton was told by the team to stop his car on the track. That lead to excluding the Briton from qualifying for not returning to the pits after setting his best lap! There wasn´t enough fuel in his car for a one-litre sample to be provided to the FIA. This means that instead of pole position Hamilton will start at the back of the grid! So there will be Pastor Maldonado on pole after all! I guess surprising isn´t a word good enough to describe today´s Formula 1 action... Breath-taking indeed!!
Who could predict who will win the race tomorrow! All I can say for sure is that tyres will be the topic once again. Vettel for instance has no new option tyres for tomorrow unlike some other drivers like Kimi... How many stops are we going to see? The pit stops will be crucial. Also the overtaking possibilities are worse than in Bahrain so will it be possible for Button to rise from P11 to the podium like Kimi did three weeks ago...So many questions in my mind at this very moment! But I think it´s not going to be Maldonado in the lead after the first corners though... Due to Hamilton´s penalty Kimi will be starting from P4 so I think it could well be the Iceman´s turn to win the race under the Spanish sun but please Sebastian, don´t make it an easy one... ;)
Ei kommentteja:
Lähetä kommentti