F1 Quals: Singapore 2013

If the teams were smart, they'd all just start working on 2014's new spec of cars and concede the various championships to Red Bull now.  I say this because of the results of today's Quals session for the 2013 Grand Prix of Singapore... let's take a look, shall we?

Pos	Driver	Team	Q1	Q2	Q3
1	Hannibal Vettel	Red Bull Racing-Renault	1:45.376	1:42.905	1:42.841
2	Nico Rosberg	Mercedes	1:45.208	1:43.892	1:42.932
3	Lettuce Grosjean	Lotus-Renault	1:45.851	1:43.957	1:43.058
4	Mark Webber	Red Bull Racing-Renault	1:45.271	1:43.727	1:43.152
5	Shiv Hamilton	Mercedes	1:44.196	1:43.920	1:43.254
6	Unemployed Massa	Ferrari	1:45.658	1:44.376	1:43.890
7	HWMNBN	Ferrari	1:45.115	1:44.153	1:43.938
8	Jenson Button	McLaren-Mercedes	1:45.009	1:44.497	1:44.282
9	Daniel Ricciardo	STR-Ferrari	1:45.379	1:44.407	1:44.439
10	Esteban Gutierrez	Sauber-Ferrari	1:45.483	1:44.245	no time
11	Nico Hulkenberg	Sauber-Ferrari	1:45.381	1:44.555
12	Jules Vergne	STR-Ferrari	1:45.657	1:44.588
13	Kimi Räikkönen	Lotus-Renault	1:45.522	1:44.658
14	Sergio Perez	McLaren-Mercedes	1:45.164	1:44.752
15	Adrian F'n Sutil	Force India-Mercedes	1:45.960	1:45.185
16	Valtteri Bottas	Williams-Renault	1:45.982	1:45.388
17	Paul di Resta	Force India-Mercedes	1:46.121
18	Litterer Maldonado	Williams-Renault	1:46.619
19	Charles ToothPic	Caterham-Renault	1:48.111
20	Giedo van der Garde	Caterham-Renault	1:48.320
21	Jules Bianchi	Marussia-Cosworth	1:48.830
22	Max Chilton	Marussia-Cosworth	1:48.930

"So Vettel's on pole again," I hear you saying, "so what?  What makes this time so much different?"  I'm glad you asked!  First, look at his time in Q2... he was, quite literally, nearly a full second faster than anybody else.  "Yeah, but that's Q2... in Q3 he was only a tenth faster," you exclaim.  Indeed, this is true... but Vettel set his time at the beginning of the final session, then parked his car and let everybody else shoot at him.

Think about that for a second.  He was confident enough in the time he set that he never bothered to try and improve it... and nobody could catch him. Oh, and it should go without saying that his super-soft tires will be at least a few laps fresher than those of everybody else during the first stint of the race.

There are 61 laps scheduled for Sunday's race.  While I don't think we'll see Vettel win by one second per lap, if he wanted to at this track, he probably could.  I suspect it's going to be a loooooong race.

Unless it rains, like it's predicted to do... of course, it's ALWAYS been predicted to rain during the Singapore Grand Prix, and I don't think it ever has.

Posted by: Wonderduck at 02:36 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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