Saturday, July 30, 2011

Hungarian GP: Qualifying

Friday practice at the Hungarian Grand Prix track was in cooler-than-normal temperatures. So perhaps that explained why Friday's practice sessions (FP1 & FP2) had been dominated by Hamilton - whose McLaren favours cooler temperatures. However by the Qualifying session on Saturday, it was warmer albeit windy.

First Qualifying session Q1 saw Buemi, Kovalainen, Trulli, Glock, Liuzzi, Ricciardo, D'Ambrosio drop out. Unfortunately, Buemi carries over a 5-place grid penalty from the German Grand Prix and so will start the race in 23th place.

In Q2, McLaren's Hamilton set a time 0.843seconds off the super-softs' time of Ferrari's Alonso, on the harder compound tyres. Positions 11th - 17th were filled by Di Resta, Petrov, Kobayashi, Heidfeld, Barrichello, Alguersuari, Maldonado - leaving Alonso, Button, Webber, Vettel, Massa, Hamilton, Rosberg, Schumacher, Sutil and Perez to fight for the Top 10 positions.

Perez makes it into Q3
By Q3, track temperature dropped slightly and Lewis went out to set a lap on his first set of super-soft tyres. Hamilton was on provisional pole position after the first runs but Vettel set a time of 1min19:815 and 'found' 0.163seconds to qualify ahead of Hamilton. 

Top 10 are Vettel, Hamilton, Button, Massa, Alonso, Webber, Rosberg, Sutil, Schumacher, Perez (who didn't set a lap in Q3).