Kimi Räikkönen & Sebastian Vettel

Kimi Räikkönen & Sebastian Vettel

sunnuntai 7. kesäkuuta 2015

Canadian GP / Qualifying: A catastrophic qualifying for Vettel!

At the moment I'm traveling around Finland on a camper with my family. Yesterday we were staying at the sea side in Kalajoki. We have a laptop wit us on the camper so I could watch the qualifying. It was raining heavily last night but I didn't mind as the quali was on.


McLaren's Jenson Button was unable to participate in the qualifying as his MP4-30 had grinded to halt in FP3 and needed a fresh Honda motor. Vettel in his Ferrari faced technical worries right away in Q1. When there were 5 minutes in the clock the German still hadn't been able to set a lap time. It was a MGU-H issue. Sebastian tried everything he could to set a competitive lap time at the end of the first segment but there was nothing Sebastian could do and he had to settle for the very disappointing P16! Both Finns, Räikkönen and Bottas made their first runs on the yellow-marked soft tyres and they both sat out the second runs while everyone except the Mercedes drivers came out on the supersofts. Both Lotus drivers seemed to be on top form and Grosjean made it in P1 on the supersofts. Rosberg and Hamilton were separated only by two thousandths of a second Rosberg having the upper hand. Also Massa at the wheel of his Williams faced power issues and the Brazilian was left in disappointing P17. So two big names were eliminated already in the first segment.


Kimi came right out when Q2 got underway. Finally it seemed that Kimi had been able to put every piece of the puzzle together and the Iceman was clearly flying! The Finn made it on top of the timesheets until the Mercedes drivers showed up on track. They were undercutting the red car by almost a second! Once again it was extremely tight between the Mercedes team-mates as there were only 12 thousandths of a second splitting those two this time in Hamilton's favor. Grosjean kept up his excellent work and the Frenchman was 3rd fastest in the second session. Force India's pace seemed promising as well as both Hulkenberg and Perez made it among the ten fastest. The Toro Rosso duo Sainz and Verstappen on the other hand were the first ones to be knocked out of the decisive final session. Alonso and both Saubers were out as well.


Kimi came out at the very beginning of the last session and the Iceman's first attempt was impressive. Hamilton's pace, however, was in a class of its own! The Briton took the provisional pole by 7 tenths to Kimi! This time not even Rosberg could match his team-mate's pace but ended up 3 tenths down on Hamilton. Kimi managed to improve his lap time on his second run but the Finn was still third in the standings. The Mercedes duo was unable to improve their lap times on their second runs so it was the 44th career pole for Lewis Hamilton! It was such a frustrating P2 for Rosberg. Bottas drove brilliantly as well a d the Finn qualified 4th. The Lotus duo Grosjean and Maldonado were stunning 5th and 6th. Hulkenberg qualified 7th, Kvyat 8th, Ricciardo 9th and Perez 10th.


Verstappen has been handed two penalties: the Dutch rookie got a 5-place grid penalty due to his crash with Grosjean in Monaco. He faced another 10-place grid drop due to taking his 5th engine in Canada. With Verstappen qualifying too low to take the full 15-place drop, he also field it is fot up a compensatory 10-second stop-go penalty for the race and will thud start at the rear of the field. And it also turned out that the technical worries were just a start of bad luck for Sebastian: The German was also handed a 5-place grid penalty for a red flag infraction in FP3. So the rear of the field it is for Sebastian as well!


Everything looks perfect for Kimi to challenge the Mercedes drivers for the top step of the podium today. And I'm sure Sebastian will fight like a wild animal to make his way through the field! I'm now in Lapland and I'll be watching the race up in the northern Finland in Levi!

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