This has been an exceptional qualifying Saturday for me. Me and my family had been invited to a birthday party and the party had been scheduled to start at 3 pm -exactly the same time as the qualifying was going to be underway! But luckily there was a way to solve this problem: I sat in the car with a tablet on my lap and watched both the pre-race broadcast and the start of the qualifying on the way. When we got there at the party I couldn´t even get me a cup of coffee before the qualifying was over... I guess I´m not a dream guest at parties on a GP weekend, hahaha ;)
In the last free practice session Red Bull´s Ricciardo had been able to split the Mercedes duo and the fact that he had been only 5 hundredths of a second slower than Hamilton gave me hope of one of the Red Bulls making it on the front row. All teams except Caterham, Marussia, Lotus and Sauber started to Q1 with the prime tyres. Right away Monaco proved its tricky nature as Toro Rosso´s Vergne spun and hit the barrier which caused the Frenchman a front wing damage. All teams in spite of Mercedes AMG and Red Bull switched to option tyres for their second run. Massa really seemed to be one of the unluckiest drivers on the grid as he got involved in a collision with no fault of his own. Caterham´s Ericsson locked up his rears and slid to the barrier taking Massa with him. Despite recording the tenth-best time in Q1 Massa was unable to return to the pits and was thus out of Q2! The Sauber duo Gutierrez and Sutil were the first drivers to be knocked out of the second session.
Everyone started to Q2 with the supersofts including the dominant Mercedes duo. Once again the Mercs topped the timesheets, this time Hamilton being the faster one of the team-mates. I was very delighted to see Vettel being 3rd fastest and finally out-performing his competitive team-mate! Both Toro Rossos made it among the top ten. Williams seemed to face a difficult qualifying: Massa was out because of the unlucky incident with Ericsson and Bottas couldn´t make it any higher than P13 today. After the qualifying Bottas told that they had struggled with getting the tyres warmed up. Straight line speed is one of the strenghts of the Williams team but Monaco is famous for lacking the long straights so no wonder their result was quite unassuming. Both Lotuses were also out of Q3.
Q3 was all about the battle between the Mercedes team-mates. Which one of them was going to conquer pole in the streets of the principality? Rosberg took the provisional pole but the German was only 59 thousandths of a second faster than his team-mate. At the end of the final session Rosberg made an error at the braking after his flying lap and slid down the escape road at turn 5, which brought out yellow flags. The incident prevented his rivals from improving their lap times and Rosberg clinched pole. The stewards took this into investigation after the qualifying because there was speculation that Rosberg might have done that deliberately but no evidence of any offence was found so Rosberg will retain his pole. However, this incident reminded of the qualifying at Monaco back in 2006 when Schumacher at the wheel of his Ferrari deliberately stopped his car on track to ensure his pole position.
Ricciardo, however, was the faster one of the Red Bull duo and took P3. Ricciardo was only 3 tenths off Rosberg, which was quite promising. After the qualifying Sebastian told that he had had problems with his ERS during the qualifying and due to those problems he didn´t have full power. So once again technical problems for Sebastian, who once again got out-qualified by his team-mate (P4 for Seb). At first a Finnish website reported that the German would have been handed a five-place grid penalty due to a gear box change but luckily that turned out to be false information. A gear box change yes but no penalty! That obviously made my night!! I was also disappointed to see that Alonso was 7 tenths faster than Kimi in Q3! It seems to be irrelevant what changes the Ferrari crew makes in terms of the set-up of Kimi´s car. Kimi´s F14T still seems to be all over the place! Alonso will start to the race from P5 Kimi from P6, Vergne from P7, Magnussen from P78 Kvyat from P9 and Perez from P10.
Monaco GP is all about the best possible grid slot as overtaking is nearly impossible so I won´t expect any miracles from my favourite drivers. But Monaco is also known of the zero tolerance for mistakes: if you lose your concentration for only a second you might end up into the barrier and your race is over. And I always keep my thumbs up for those I passionately support, no matter what the results will finally be so go Kimi and go Sebastian! I hope one day I can witness the glory of the Monaco GP myself as there certainly is something extraordinary and magical about the venue.
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