Pos	Driver	Car	Q1	Q2	Q3
1	Sebastian Vettel	Ferrari	1:43.336	1:40.529	1:39.491
2	Embryo Verstappen	Red Bull Racing	1:42.010	1:40.332	1:39.814
3	Smiley Ricciardo	Red Bull Racing	1:42.063	1:40.385	1:39.840
4	Kimi Räikkönen	Ferrari	1:43.328	1:40.525	1:40.069
5	Lewis Hamilton	Mercedes	1:42.455	1:40.577	1:40.126
6	Valtteri Bottas	Mercedes	1:43.137	1:41.409	1:40.810
7	Nico Hulkenberg	Renault	1:42.586	1:41.277	1:41.013
8	Fernando Alonso	McLaren Honda	1:42.086	1:41.442	1:41.179
9	Stoffelwaffle	McLaren Honda	1:42.222	1:41.227	1:41.398
10	Carlos Sainz	Toro Rosso	1:42.176	1:41.826	1:42.056
11	Jolyon Palmer	Renault	1:42.472	1:42.107
12	Sergio Perez	Force India Mercedes	1:43.594	1:42.246
13	Kid Kvyat	Toro Rosso	1:42.544	1:42.338
14	False Esteban!	Force India Mercedes	1:43.626	1:42.760
15	Lettuce Grosjean	Haas Ferrari	1:43.627	1:43.883
16	Kevin Magnussen	Haas Ferrari	1:43.756
17	FelipeNot Retired Massa	Williams Mercedes	1:44.014
18	Pleasant Stroll	Williams Mercedes	1:44.728
19	Herelein Wehrlein	Sauber Ferrari	1:45.059
20	Sony Ericsson	Sauber Ferrari	1:45.570

For a while there, it looked for all the world like Embryo Verstappen was going to take his first pole position, not to mention wresting the title of "youngest pole sitter" from Seb Vettel.  But right at the end of Q3 the Ferrari driver pulled an incredible lap out of his fundament, one that came as such a surprise to him that when he was informed of his pole, he let loose with a scream that could very nearly only be heard by dogs.  The question is, how long will he get to enjoy the primacy of his position?  Verstappen is not known for his... um... restrained driving style, and there's got to be a non-trival chance that we'll see a shattered pile of red carbon fiber parked at the side of the track somewhere in the first lap.

In other news, McLaren finally shot their partnership with Honda in the face.  The team then announced that they'll have Renault power units in the back of their chassis.  "But Wonderduck," I hear you say because I've got super-hearing, it's a duck thing, "didn't Renault say they couldn't support any more teams above the three they're working with now?"  Indeed they did, my friends!  Which brings us to the next part: Toro Rosso has announced that they'll be running Honda power units next year!  This is legitimately a no-lose situation for them.  Remember, Honda was McLaren's sole major sponsor for the past three years, not only providing them with engines but giving them a LOT of money to boot... I've heard upwards of $150million, though I don't know if that's per year or over the life of their partnership.  So, undoubtedly there's a substantial financial aspect to the deal.  The other part is, while yes, the engines have not been swell, McLaren has done the really hard part: they had to deal with the "wow, our engines suck" part of development.  We're seeing signs that Honda is starting to come around, and there's some pundits that are saying that the Honda could be BETTER than Renault's lump next year.  And if it's not?  Well, Toro Rosso is hardly burning up the charts anyway, but they'll be ahead of the game financially.  As I said, no-lose.

Race in the morning, see ya then!

Posted by: GreyDuck at September 16, 2017 05:54 PM (rKFiU)

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