Saturday, October 15, 2011

Korean GP: Qualifying

Both Friday practice sessions were in the wet but Saturday morning was dry and gave the drivers a better indicator of their true pace.

Korean GP (photo from @MyTeamLotus)



Out after Q1 were Barrichello, Kovalainen, Trulli, Glock, D'Ambrosio, Liuzzi, Ricciardo. Ricciardo did not set a time as his car developed a problem before Qualifying.

In the second Qualifying session, Alguersuari, Schumacher, Buemi, Kobayashi, Senna, Maldonado, Perez qualified 11th to 18th, leaving Hamilton, Vettel, Webber, Button, Massa, Alonso, Rosberg, Petrov, Sutil and Di Resta to fight for the top 10 places.

Fight for top 10 resulted in this order for tomorrow's race: Hamilton (1:35.820s), Vettel, Button, Webber, Massa, Alonso, Rosberg, Petrov, Di Resta and Sutil. 

Top 3 drivers at Korean GP (photo by @thefifthDriver)



Vettel is not in the middle (photo by @thefifthDriver)


Hamilton breaks RedBull streak of pole positions and this is on the weekend his team celebrates their 700th Grand Prix. Hope a race win tomorrow can finally bring a smile to his face. Goodness knows, he needs a great deal of a morale boost.

Addendum: Sebastian Vettel took a shortcut while racing back to the pits in preparation for a last run in Q3. The stewards ruled that no penalty would be applied since he started with 17 seconds before end of session. See photo below for Stewards' ruling.

Stewards Ruling (photo from @F1Kate)