F1 Quals: Brazil 2014

Lowering skies and sub-optimal temperatures greeted the Blundering Herd as they got ready to qualify for tomorrow's 2014 Grand Prix of Brazil.  Would it affect anybody?  Here's the provisional grid:

Pos	Driver	Team	Q1	Q2	Q3
1	Nico Rosberg	Mercedes	1:10.347	1:10.303	1:10.023
2	Lewis Hamilton	Mercedes	1:10.457	1:10.712	1:10.056
3	Felipe Massa	Williams-Mercedes	1:10.602	1:10.343	1:10.247
4	Valtteri Bottas	Williams-Mercedes	1:10.832	1:10.421	1:10.305
5	Jenson Button	McLaren-Mercedes	1:11.097	1:11.127	1:10.930
6	4Time Vettel	Red Bull Racing-Renault	1:11.880	1:11.129	1:10.938
7	Kevin Magnussen	McLaren-Mercedes	1:11.134	1:11.211	1:10.969
8	HWMNBN	Ferrari	1:11.558	1:11.215	1:10.977
9	Daniel Ricciardo	Red Bull Racing-Renault	1:11.593	1:11.208	1:11.075
10	Kimi Räikkönen	Ferrari	1:11.193	1:11.188	1:11.099
11	Esteban!	Sauber-Ferrari	1:11.520	1:11.591
12	Nico Hulkenberg	Force India-Mercedes	1:11.848	1:11.976
13	Adrian F'n Sutil	Sauber-Ferrari	1:11.943	1:12.099
14	Kid Kvyat	STR-Renault	1:11.423	No Time
15	Lettuce Grosjean	Lotus-Renault	1:12.037
16	Jules Vergne	STR-Renault	1:12.040
17	Sergio Perez	Force India-Mercedes	1:12.076
18	Crashtor Maldozer	Lotus-Renault	1:12.233

The end of Q3 definitely fell into the "exciting" category.  Rosberg had pole when Hamilton turned his final lap.  That lap was not only good enough to wrest pole from his teammate, but was fast enough to set a qualifying record for Interlagos.  It took the title from Rubens Barrichello in the Ferrari F2004, probably the pinnacle of the modern F1 car.  The F2004 holds almost all of the qualifying and single-lap records for circuits still in use today... indeed, the fastest lap ever at Interlagos is a 1:09.something, set by the F2004 in practice that year.

However, Hamilton's record stood for something like ten seconds, for Rosberg came along and grabbed his 10th pole of the year with his final lap.  The whole time, though, he was looking over his shoulder at the man behind him, one Felipe Massa.  The Brazilian, racing at his home track (almost literally; he grew up in Saõ Paulo, within sight of the circuit), had been making things difficult for the Mercedes boys by being consistently faster than them down the straights, and with the vocal support of the Brazilian fans (that's a lot of fans!), had a legit chance at taking pole.  Alas, he was unable to do so, for a reason that we saw all too much of today.

If I had to describe today's Quals session with one word, it'd have to be "sloppy."  The track surface temps were some fifty degrees cooler today from Practice, and it seems like many of the teams were set up for rain.  As a result, we saw a LOT of smoking tires, blown turns, flatspots and four-wheel drifting.  It got so bad that I was joking to myself at one point: "first man to turn a clean lap wins pole and we can all go home."  I'm still not sure anybody did do so.

So tomorrow actually has the possibility of being interesting, particularly if the expected rains come.  Programming note: the race is actually being shown live on CNBC at 930am, then on tape delay on NBC as mentioned in the "F1 on TV" report.  That's new, I only just found that out last night.

See ya there, y'all.

Posted by: Wonderduck at 12:11 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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