European GP: Qualifying

A harbour-side street circuit in a dry, hot Valencia was the venue of Qualifying for the European Grand Prix.

Drop-Outs from Q1 were the usual suspects of ALG, KOV, TRU, GLO, LIU, DAM, KAR (Alguersuari, Kovalainen, Trulli, Glock, Liuzzi, d'Ambrosio, Karthikeyan)

Q2 got underway shortly afterwards with Ferrari's Massa first out on track. Session was RED FLAGGED when Maldonado stopped in the middle of the track with 8 minutes to go - due to what seemed to be mechanical or electrical failure. At this point, Buemi and Petrov hadn't set a time. Session restarted soon afterwards and all 17 drivers got a time on the board.

However Sutil pushed Petrov out of the top 10 in the last few seconds of Q2. This also means Sutil outqualifies his team-mate for only the second time this season since Turkish GP; partly due to di Resta's lack of running on Friday (Hulkenberg crashed his car during FP1) and a wobble in the last few seconds of Q2. Sutil was later fined €18,400 for 2 incidents of pit-lane speeding in Q2. Mike Gascoigne of Team Lotus suggested that was perhaps for an error in his pit-lane limiter.

Out of Q2 are PET, DIR, BAR, KOB, MAL, PER, BUE (Petrov, DiResta, Barichello, Maldonado, Perez, Buemi) leaving Vettel, Hamilton, Button, Alonso, Webber, Schumacher, Rosberg, Massa, Heidfeld and Sutil to battle it out for the top 10 positions.

With 2 minutes left in the session and with Vettel on provisional pole (Imin36.975), all the front runners went back out including Schumacher who hadn't set a time yet.

Top 10 are: VET, WEB, HAM, ALO, MAS, BUT, ROS, SCH, HEI, SUT

Top 3 Drivers (courtesy BBC.co.uk)

10 place grid-drop for Schmacher at next race

The Hungarian Grand Prix is generally regarded as one of the less exciting tracks on the calender, but perhaps events in today's race might go some way to changing that perception.
We saw several interesting incidents in the pit-lane, Nico Rosberg's right rear tyre airborne and hitting a mechanic, Sutil and Kubica crashing in the pit-lane due to an misjudged signal from a Renault lollipop man, and Vettel holding up the track (by longer than 10 car-lenghts) just before the safety-car returned to the pits, resulting in a Drive-Through penalty for him.
And the most daring overtake manoevre of all came in the penultimate lap of the race; Barrichello against his former team-mate Michael Schumacher. Schumy would later comment that he thought Barrichello would overtake from his left which was why there wasn't enough room in the right side for the William's car, and almost resulted in Barrichello kissing the wall.
The case was duly referred to the Stewards, who have ruled that he 'illegitimately impeded' Rubens, and have penalised Schumacher with a 10 place grid-drop at the next race.
I wonder how that will go down with Ross Brawn, Team Principal of Mercedes GP and if this spells the beginning of the end of the most anticipated come-back in F1.