I brought my laptop outside and I´m sitting at my back yard under the warm Finnish spring sun and I cannot imagine any other place more perfect where to write about the one thing I love so much: Formula 1 racing! So enjoying the warm sun and a cold bottle of blueberry cider I´m ready to go back to the afternoon´s qualifying session.
I had certain expectations in terms of the qualifying. During the 3-week break before coming to Europe all teams had tried to develop and improve their cars as much as possible. After the three free practice sessions at Circuit de Catalunya I have to say Williams seemed more competitive than three weeks ago in Bahrain. It really seemed they had taken an impressive leap forward and in my wild imagination I could even see Bottas fighting for to make his way through to Q3. So in that regard the qualifying was a disappointment, I can´t deny that. Bottas was the first driver to be knocked out of Q2 and Maldonado didn´t perform any better as the Venezuelan qualified 18th. Maybe Williams have been able to take a big step forward but so seem all the other teams as well...
Lotus´s Finnish ace Kimi Räikkönen was on fire from the very first session! Kimi´s driving was such a pleasure to my eye, he´s so incredibly good at what he does! In Q1 he would have set the fastest time but on his last run he was blocked by Sauber´s Gutierrez. This incident caused a three-place grid penalty for the Mexican (starting 19th tomorrow). There were some unexpected turns in Q2 as well. The battle between Kimi, Vettel and Alonso was extremely tight. All three men were separated only by some thousandths of a second! The Toro Rossos seem to have made some progress during the break but they didn´t, however, quite make it into the top ten. McLaren´s difficulties were all but over and Button qualified in P14. His Mexican team-mate Perez on the other hand made his way through to the final session by being 7th fastest. Another impeding incident occurred in Q2 as Red Bull´s Webber was blocked by Massa in his Ferrari and the Brazilian will also face a 3-place grid penalty due to the incident.
I truly trusted in Kimi´s chances to make it on pole today. In the free practices Mercedes´s pace had seemed to be kind of lost and I didn´t believe in their chances to conquer pole in Spain. But there the pace was - it seemed to suddenly appear from nowhere when it was needed and Rosberg took the pole in quite a dominant way! So second pole in the row for the German Mercedes driver. His team-mate Hamilton completed the first row for Mercedes. It´s almost magical how things can turn around in one night in the world of Formula 1! Vettel qualified 3rd and Kimi managed to make his way up to 4th place. The Ferrari duo made it on to the third row but due to the impeding incident Massa will be dropped from P6 down to P9. Kimi´s team-mate Grosjean will start in P6 and Webber in P7, Perez P8 and Di Resta P10.
I rely on the fact that Mercedes´s race pace has been anything but good during this season. So I don´t see that Rosberg or Hamilton have any real chances to fight for the victory tomorrow. The battle will more likely be between Sebastian, Kimi and Alonso. The tyre factor will certainly have a role of its own. Will Lotus still have an advantage in terms of the tyre degradation compared to their rivals... I hope so. Sebastian had a different tyre strategy in the qualifying today: the Red Bull ace used only option tyres so he has many fresh sets of prime tyres for the race. An interesting choice indeed. Alonso is also a master of taking superb starts so the Spaniard is probably a dangerous opponent in tomorrow´s race in front of his home crowd. Vettel might face hard time to fight for the victory as Red Bull has had difficulties in saving tyres and make them last as long as for example Ferrari have. And then there´s always the possibility that the race will be driven in wet conditions!
Tomorrow would be a perfect day for Kimi to show that Lotus haven´t been weakened by Technical director James Allison´s departure. The Iceman´s victory tomorrow would end all talks of Lotus losing their performance due to Allison leaving the team! Sounds like a perfect plan, right? ;)
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