As I’m at the GP I’ve not got bundles of time to go over FP1/2/3

In short:

• Vettel & Hamilton look strong
• Both Alonso and Massa look good in the times (remember Ferrari’s race-pace)
• Alonso needs a podium to carry the championship over to Brazil!

Times are:

(click on the image for a bigger version of the table)

Qualifying at Silverstone was not ideal as there was a fair chunk of rain! Luckily I had my Ferrari jacket to save me from getting drenched me when I was not under the grandstand!

Q1 started with all of the drivers going quickly out on intermediate tyres so they could put in an initial lap in-case the conditions deteriorated further! The session ended shoving out Jenson Button, Vitaly Petrov, Heikki Kovalainen Timo Glock, Pedro de la Rosa, Narain Karthikeyan and Charles Pic ( who failed to meet the 107% time!).

Q2 saw the rain get worse! Most teams went straight for full wet tyres, although Ferrari gambled on this and ran initially with intermediate tyres. They soon realised this was a mistake and both drivers switched to wets.

In the end Di Resta, Kobayashi, Rosberg, Ricciardo, Senna, Vergne, and Perez lost out on getting into the pole position shoot-out!

Q3 saw track conditions improve with drivers on intermediate tyres. Straight away it was evident that just like Malaysia the Ferrari was faster in the wet with Alonso flying!

Fernando Alonso secured pole position ahead of Mark Webber and Michael Schumacher. Sebastian Vettel, Felipe Massa, Kimi Räikkönen, Pastor Maldonado, Lewis Hamilton, Nico Hulkenberg and Romain Grosjean rounded out the top ten.

There were however several penalties for the race to be applyed to the grid:

Jean Eric Vergne – 10 place grid drop for European GP incident
Kamui Kobayashi – 5 place grid drop for European GP incident
Nico Hulkenberg – 5 place grid drop for gearbox change
Charles Pic – 5 place grid drop for gearbox change (races at stewards discretion after failing to meet 107% time)

Well Canada was again in the spirit of this amazing and exciting season with Lewis Hamilton making the most of a 2 stop strategy to storm past 10 drivers in the last 8 laps to take the win!

It did look like Ferrari Driver Fernando Alonso was in with a shot of bagging his second victory but his tyres fell off the edge of the cliff towards the end and he dropped back to 5th handing a very fast Hamilton the win!

Highlights are here:

Perez and Grosjean also shared the podium with him!

This puts Lewis in the lead of the drivers championship now! But for how long……..

Final race results were:

Sebastian Vettel is on pole position for the Canadian Grand Prix after beating Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso by three tenths of a second. A huge gap considering he had a tyre lock up during the final sector of his fastest lap too!

Times were:

This video also shows the post qualifying press conference:

The Bahrain GP was another corker with Sebastian Vettel showing he is back on form! Obviously the Red Bull engineers have been working hard to move the car back up the field!

Bahrain was also a great result for Renault F1 Team with both Kimi Räikkönen and Romain Grosjean making the podium! The race also prooved to be good for Ferrari with Fernando Alonso coming 7th and Felipe Massa scoring his first points of the season in 9th!

Full SKY F1 highlights are on this video! ENJOY!

Q1

In Q1 tradition Prime (hard) tyres were the order of the day to begin with. Later on towards the end of the session we saw the usual pattern of borderline drivers moving to the Option (soft) tyres.

Michael Schumacher had dodgey DRS and ended up stuck in the drop-zone! As if that surprise wasn’t enough, Heikki Kovalainen managed to qualify within the top 17 going through to Q2.

Charles Pic must have also been pleased with his effort as for the first time this season he out-qualified his team-mate Timo Glock.

Drivers knocked out in Q1 were:

18. Michael Schumacher – 1:34.865
19. Jean-Eric Vergne – 1:35.014
20. Vitaly Petrov – 1:35.823
21. Charles Pic – 1:37.683
22. Pedro de la Rosa – 1:37.883
23. Timo Glock – 1:37.905
24. Narain Karthikeyan – 1:38.314

Q2

Q2 was another pig of a session for Felipe Massa! He made it out to the track early and made it into the top 10, although he was quickly pushed out. Then he set a lap putting him into ninth ahead of Alonso. It was however not to be as other drivers improved their lap times pushing him out in Q2. Once again Alonso showed why Ferrari fans love him so. He donned a new set of the Option tyres and put himself solidly into Q1.
Kimi Räikkönen did not make it in and took 11th on the grid, but Daniel Ricciardo was on top form making it through!

Hamilton was also flying and went straight to the top of the Q2 times!

Drivers knocked out in Q2 were:

11. Kimi Räikkönen – 1:33.789
12. Kamui Kobayashi – 1:33.806
13. Nico Hulkenberg – 1:33.807
14. Felipe Massa – 1:33.912
15. Brunno Senna – 1:34.017
16. Heikki Kovalainen – 1:36.132
17. Pastor Maldonado – No Q2 Time Set

Q3

Alonso and Di Resta didn’t set times in Q1 to start on fresh tyres. Lewis Hamilton initially set the fastest lap time. By the end of the session Mark Webber went fast enough to take pole but was then beaten by team mate Sebasian Vettel.

This is Vettel’s first pole position of the season and he always starts strong. Let’s see what he can do with it!

The final line up was:

1. Sebastian Vettel – 1:32.422
2. Lewis Hamilton – 1:32.520
3. Mark Webber – 1:32.637
4. Jenson Button – 1:32.711
5. Nico Rosberg – 1:32.821
6. Daniel Ricciardo – 1:32.912
7. Romain Grosjean – 1:33.008
8. Sergio Perez – 1:33.934
9. Fernando Alonso – No Q1 Time Set
10. Paul Di Resta – No Q1 Time Set

FP1

FP1 at Bahrain International Circuit saw Valtteri Bottas out in the Williams instead of Bruno Senna. It was then usual formula of teams running installation laps and getting to grips with the dusty, hot, high speed track. Turn 10 seemed to be troublesome with a few lock-ups from drivers.

Ferrari and Red Bull sported ‘flo-vis’ paint for aero testing (for small upgrade packages). Ferrari have several minor upgrades for the race while while Lotus have a new front wing to try out!

There was speculation that Mercedes would dominate again in Sakhir as 2/3 of the circuit is spent on full throttle, however at the end of FP1 it Lewis Hamilton who ended up going fastest with a 1:33.572.

FP2

FP2 started with the news that Force India would not be taking part in the session due to several of their mechanics being narrowly missed by some petrol bombs from the riots. Of-course the media bit into this and used it as a good starting topic to discuss the controversial nature of the race being run at all!

When things got down the the session starting it was another standard show with cars running performance checks on the softer compound tyres and running high fuel race simulation laps. Nico Rosberg ended up topping the lap times with a 1:32.816. Mercedes high track speed should be very worrying for the other teams in qualifying!

I picked this YouTube video from Kaspersky Motorsport‘s Youtube Channel.

It’s the English language Bahrain preview interview with Ferrari Team Principal Stefano Domenicali and definitely provides more insight into how the team plans to move forward with Bahrain and future races.

Shanghai is one of the two highest speed circuits and thanks the controversial fluidic switch for front wing stalling Mercedes were always going to be strong here. With a front row lockout thanks to Hamilton’s grid penalty for a gearbox change it looked almost fated that we would see a Mercedes win at China 2012!

In the end it came down to how many stops drivers were doing. Massa managed to not take home any points thanks to him being on a 2 stop, with Alonso being on the right 3 stop strategy and bringing home a couple of points!

McLaren went for three stops while Mercedes were down for a two stop strategy. This gave a distinct advantage to Mercedes, but Hamilton had little choice as in qualifying he set his fastest time and had to start the race on a set of tyres that had done six laps. This meant he would struggle to make it to lap 13, which was the window for most 2 stops strategies.

Anyway it was a good win for Roseberg with Button and Hamilton rounding off the podium!

Q1

Q1 started as expected with the cars doing their first times on Prime (hard) tyres at the start and towards the end of the session the boarderline drivers moving to the Option (soft) tyres to set better times. The Sky commentary particularly focused of Ferrari’s #2 man Felipe Massa who was one of the first to change to Options to get through to Q2! There was also an investigation of an incident between Pastor Maldonado and Heikki Kovalainen and after Kovalainen hinted at Maldonado obstructed him on a hot lap!

Drivers knocked out in Q1 were:

18. Jean-Eric Vergne – 1:37.714
19. Heikki Kovalainen – 1:38.463
20. Vitaly Petrov – 1:38.667
21. Timo Glock – 1:39.282
22. Charles Pic – 1:39.717
23. Pedro de la Rosa – 1:40.411
24. Narain Karthikeyan – 1:41.000

Q2

Q2 was a tough struggle for a lot of the teams and Ferrari were no exception! Webber initially ran top of the board just ahead of both Mercedes. Massa was only three tenths off Alonso (who made it to Q1) but it was not his day though as Felipe’s three tenths put him qualifying 12th!

The final Q1 victors were Webber, Schumacher, Rosberg, Hamilton, Button, Raikkonen, Grosjean, Kobayashi, Perez and Alonso. Q1 was going to be interesting as all 10 were separated by just three tenths of a second!

Drivers knocked out in Q2 were:

11. Sebastian Vettel – 1:36.031
12. Felipe Massa – 1:36.255
13. Pastor Maldonado – 1:36.283
14. Brunno Senna – 1:36.289
15. Paul Di Resta – 1:36.317
16. Nico Hulkenberg – 1:36.745
17. Daniel Ricciardo – 1:36.956

Q3

Kimi Räikkönen was first out for Q3 with his first lap being destroyed by Rosberg who set a 1:38.121 (the time he set for pole). We even heard Schumacher comment on Nico’s time as “nice” over the team radio!

Hamilton tried his best to beat Roseberg’s time but did not manage to top it putting him in second (plus a 5 spot penalty for a gearbox change). Schumacher managed to take the Mercedes superior straight line speed into a comfortable 3rd and Sauber man Kamui Kobayashi managed to pull a fine hot lap out of the bag last minute to grab fourth.

The final line up before Hamilton’s grid penalty is applied was:

1. Nico Rosberg – 1:35.121
2. Lewis Hamilton – 1:35.626
3. Michael Schumacher – 1:35.691
4. Kamui Kobayashi – 1:35,784
5. Kimi Raikkonen – 1:35.898
6. Jenson Buttonl – 1:36.191
7. Mark Webber – 1:36.290
8. Sergio Perez – 1:36.524
9. Fernando Alonso – 1:36.622
10. Romain Grosjean – No Time Set