On my previous blog post I mentioned there was talk about the legality of the Red Bull´s 2012 car. The holes in the floor of the chassis were declared illegal shortly after the Monaco GP. In spite of that Webber got to keep his victory because none of the teams made a protest after the race. So the performance of the Red Bull cars was a bit of a question mark, whether the new regulation would have an effect on the speed of the RB8´s... After seeing the FP3 and Vettel topping the time sheets I felt confident, however. I knew Red Bull was going to be on top at the qualifying!
Q1 was business as usual. If you want to look for the worst performance in Q1 it must be Vergne in Toro Rosso. He missed the FP3 due to a mistake of his own and in the qualifying he wasn´t able to match up to the performance of his team-mate but was out of Q2.
Q2 was a thrilling battle because only 10 drivers could make it to the final section of the qualifying. Both Red Bulls and Ferraris made it easily to the top ten (yes, even Massa made it easily this time!). With the new exhaust upgrade Ferrari has taken a significant step forward in terms of speed! Hamilton at the wheel of McLaren had been very fast throughout the whole weekend but his team-mate Button doesn´t seem to get rid of the problems concerning the car. He could barely make it to the Q3 by being 10th. Lotus as well still didn´t have a problem-free weekend! Grosjean could reach the top ten but Kimi had a hydraulics problem in his car and qualified 12th which was a disappointment both for him and for me, too! Both Saubers were also knocked out of Q3. Maldonado in his Williams was improving his lap time significantly at his very last attempt but he lost the control of the car at the last turn and spun! What a costly mistake from the Venezuelan again!
In Q3 there was no ambiguity of who was the fastest man on the track! I was so happy that at Montreal the teams didn´t need to save tyres for the race (many teams may try a one stop strategy) so we saw a real battle for pole! Vettel´s first run was brilliant and he held the provisional pole. Hamilton and Alonso didn´t seem to be able to match up to the speed of the German! At his final attempt Vettel was able to improve his lap time so finally there were 3 tenths of a second separating Vettel and his closest rival Hamilton. The gap was certainly bigger than I would have expected! At least the back-to-back world champion showed the whole wide world that Red Bull doesn´t need the holes in the floor! ;) Webber was previously also angered by media representatives implying that the Australian had won the Monaco GP with an illegal car. P4 for Webber spoke for itself! Alonso will start in P3 alongside Webber. Button was the only driver using the yellow marked soft compound of Pirelli tyres whilst everyone else was on super softs.
I hope Lotus will be able to solve the hydraulics issue in Kimi´s car by the start of the race! Kimi may try to drive the race with a one stop strategy so I´m confident that he´ll hopefully score a lot of points today! Grosjean starting in P7 could have a strong race as well if only the Frenchman doesn´t end up crashing to somebody... The performance of the Mercedes team is kind of a question mark for me. They do have an impressive straight line speed but I´m just wondering if they´ll suffer from tyre degradation more than their rivals...
All in all I was absolutely delighted to see Sebastian back on pole! He did two perfect laps and his performance was utterly mesmerizing! I had already been missing this feeling of pure happiness as this was only the 2nd pole of the season for Seb. It´s kind of bizarre how a certain Formula 1 driver driving his car on the limit can cause strong feelings like this ;) I´m hoping these strong positive feelings keep coming during the race, too! From pole to victory it is!
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