F1 Quals: Spain 2010

Last year, the top 17 cars on the grid for the Grand Prix of Spain were covered by .800 of a second.  What's the result this year?  Let's take a look at the provisional grid:

Pos	Driver	Team	Q1	Q2	Q3
1	Mark Webber	RBR-Renault	1:21.412	1:20.655	1:19.995
2	Sebastian Vettel	RBR-Renault	1:21.680	1:20.772	1:20.101
3	Lewis Hamilton	McLaren-Mercedes	1:21.723	1:21.415	1:20.829
4	HWMNBN	Ferrari	1:21.957	1:21.549	1:20.937
5	Jenson Button	McLaren-Mercedes	1:21.915	1:21.168	1:20.991
6	Slappy Schumacher	Mercedes GP	1:22.528	1:21.557	1:21.294
7	Robert Kubica	Renault	1:22.488	1:21.599	1:21.353
8	Nico Rosberg	Mercedes GP	1:22.419	1:21.867	1:21.408
9	Felipe Massa	Ferrari	1:22.564	1:21.841	1:21.585
10	Kamui Kobayashi	Burger King Sauber-Ferrari	1:22.577	1:21.725	1:21.984
11	Adrian Sutil	Force India-Mercedes	1:22.628	1:21.985
12	Pete Rose	Burger King Sauber-Ferrari	1:22.211	1:22.026
13	Nico Hulkenberg	Williams-Cosworth	1:22.857	1:22.131
14	Vitaly Petrov	Renault	1:22.976	1:22.139
15	Sebastien Buemi	STR-Ferrari	1:22.699	1:22.191
16	NKOTT	STR-Ferrari	1:22.593	1:22.207
17	Vitantonio Liuzzi	Force India-Mercedes	1:23.084	1:22.854
18	Rubens Barrichello	Williams-Cosworth	1:23.125
19	Jarno Trulli	Lotus-Cosworth	1:24.674
20	Heikki Kovalaineninnie	Lotus-Cosworth	1:24.748
21	Timo Glockenspiel	Virgin-Cosworth	1:25.475
22	Lucas di Grassi	Virgin-Cosworth	1:25.556
23	Karun Chandhok	HRT-Cosworth	1:26.750
24	Bruno Senna	HRT-Cosworth	1:27.122

Yeah, not exactly everybody covered by less than a second.  There's nearly a second between first and third!  Pretty much a dominating performance by the Red Bulls, and as the Legendary Announce Team pointed out, this is without the trick "F-Duct" system that McLaren, Ferrari and Mercedes are using.  What'll happen when the RB6 finally gets one of their own? 

Overshadowed by Red Bull making the Circuit de Catalunya their own personal playground is Slappy Schumacher finally outqualifying his teammate Nico Rosberg for the first time this season.  Looks like the longer wheelbase is to the seven-time World Champion's liking.  One would think that Rosberg can't be pleased at the moment, but when you're Slappy, you get what you want and everybody else can go pee up a wheel tether.

Sadly, Force India's Adrian Sutil didn't make it into Q3, ending his streak at four races.  It didn't look like his final lap in Q2 was marred by anything untoward, like an off or excessive traffic... he just couldn't make it go any faster when he needed to.  Too bad, that.

For the boys at the back, insult added to injury as Glockenspiel, diGrassi, and Chandhok are all having to take five grid-spot penalties.  The Virgins' penalty is for a procedural error where the team neglected to tell the FIA what gear ratios they were going to be using by a certain time, while Chandhok needed to have his gearbox changed.  Vitaly Petrov of Renault is getting the same penalty.

One driver who isn't getting a penalty is HWMNBN.  In Q3, the Ferrari driver was released into the pitlane after a tire change, at which point he nearly performed an overrun assault on Nico Rosberg.  The Mercedes driver slammed on his brakes as HWMNBN went on his merry way, prompting Rosberg to snap over the radio "(HWMNBN) needs to be penalized for that."  Of course, HWMNBN being penalized in Spain is about as likely to happen as Slappy being penalized at Hockenheim.  Instead, Ferrari is being tagged with a $20000 fine for an "unsafe release."  To make matters worse, HWMNBN just had to open his mouth afterwards, saying in effect that if he was penalized, the FIA would need to rethink "some of the grand prixs we've had so far in terms of penalties in the pit lane," obviously referring to Hamilton and Vettel's little squabble in China.

Man, I hate that guy.

Race Sunday, F1U! sometime in the afternoon.

Posted by: Wonderduck at 02:46 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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