Q1 was pretty much business as usual. Unfortunately the Finnish Williams driver Bottas was beaten by his team-mate this time and the Finn was the first one to be knocked out of Q2. In spite of William´s upgrades they haven´t been able to make a leap forward, which is really a shame as Bottas would deserve so much better with his skills!
Q2 meant battling for the place among the top ten. Both Toro Rossos seemed extremely competitive! Mark Webber had announced on Thursday that he´ll retire from F1 at the end of this season which launched all the speculation about who will be the one to replace the Australian. There have been three names that have come up in that regard: the current Toro Rosso drivers Ricciardo and Vergne and Kimi Räikkönen who doesn´t have a contract for next year. It seems to me that this news has been a huge boost for the Toro Rosso duo as Ricciardo was 5th fastest in Q2! Vergne unfortunately made a mistake on his flying lap and he was unable to make his way through in to the final session. Both Force India drivers also made it easily in to the top ten! Unlike Button in his McLaren who was the first one to be knocked out of the Q3. Massa in his Ferrari was 12th and didn´t make his way through, either. Kimi in his Lotus made it just barely among the top ten the Iceman being 10th fastest in Q2.
There was no doubt about the fastest car at Silverstone today. Once again the Mercedes duo was simply unbeatable! This time it was Hamilton´s turn to take pole in front of his cheering home crowd. His team-mate Rosberg made it a front row lock-out for Mercedes so the silver arrows were in a class of their own. Red Bull´s Vettel was 3rd fastest followed by his team-mate Webber in P4. Force India´s Di Resta qualified 5th but due to the underweight car the Briton was disqualified from the qualifying and he´ll start to the race from the pits. Ricciardo in his Toro Rosso qualified 6th but due to Di Resta´s disqualification the Australian will start from P5. Force India´s Sutil will start from P6 so Force India´s pace has been more than impressive! Unlike Ferrari´s: Alonso seemed to be lacking pace and the Spaniard was only 10th fastest! Lotus seemed also to be struggling with their pace in spite of their development work. Grosjean qualified in P8 and Kimi in P9.
There has been a lot of talk about Lotus´s "magic device", the passive double DRS system that the team calls simply the "Device". Kimi has been running with the mysterious "Device" that should improve straight line speed significantly but his team-mate Grosjean hasn´t had it in his car. The results are very controversial: Grosjean finished ahead of the Iceman despite not having the magical "Device" in his car! And more significantly, both Kimi and Grosjean had the same straight line speed no matter of whether the "Device" was used or not! So in this light things don´t seem so awfully good for Lotus tomorrow. But I´m confident that Lotus will have strong race pace and miracles are possible as far as this team is concerned!
Although Mercedes got an impressive advantage from the secret tyre test with Pirelli (which lead only to a very mild punishment that Mercedes isn´t allowed to take part in the young drivers´ test at Silverstone in July and both Mercedes and Pirelli were reprimanded) I don´t believe that their tyre issue has been entirely fixed. In other words I believe Sebastian has every chance to win the race tomorrow! His closest rivals Alonso and Kimi are far behind in the back. Sebastian has a good chance to strengthen his lead in the championship standings if everything goes to his plan tomorrow!
Formula 1 world is all about rumours. The juiciest rumours at the moment consider the replacement of Mark Webber at Red Bull. If I´m asked I don´t see how the Toro Rosso duo Ricciardo and Vergne could ever compare to Kimi Räikkönen in any circumstances! And now when it seems that Lotus is unable to keep up with their car development work if compared to other top teams the decision looks like to be an easy one for Kimi. He wants to have a winning car and at this stage Lotus seems unable to provide the Iceman with such a car! Red Bull also has much more money to run their team but not even in F1 money automatically makes you happy. All I can say is that at this point I could easily see Kimi switching to Red Bull. But the rumours have just begun... I´m sure there´s plenty of more to come! And Kimi doesn´t need anybody´s advice: the Iceman knows what he´s doing and he decides when it´s time to do so.
It´s almost 3 a.m. in the middle of the night here in Finland when I´m writing this. A good thing about being on a holiday is that you can let yourself to be carried away with all the F1 related emotions and you can focus on blogging in the middle of the night! I can´t wait to see what will happen in the race. Fingers crossed for Sebastian and Kimi :)
P.S. I quit my job at my current work place this week so I baked my colleagues a cake - a Formula 1 related cake of course! ;) I hope Red Bull will give me wings in the future as well ;)
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