F1 Quals: Turkey 2010

Over the past few years, Turkey has been Ferrari's sandbox, but then BrawnGP came along last year and kicked sand in their faces.  Now the Red Bullies have arrived on the scene, looking for a fight.  Will Ferrari stand up for themselves?  Will McLaren or Mercedes finally kick Red Bull out of the top spot on the grid?  Let's take a look at the provisional lineup:

Pos	Driver	Team	Q1	Q2	Q3
1	Mark Webber	RBR-Renault	1:27.500	1:26.818	1:26.295
2	Lewis Hamilton	McLaren-Mercedes	1:27.667	1:27.013	1:26.433
3	Sebastian Vettel	RBR-Renault	1:27.067	1:26.729	1:26.760
4	Jenson Button	McLaren-Mercedes	1:27.555	1:27.277	1:26.781
5	Slappy Schumacher	Mercedes GP	1:27.756	1:27.438	1:26.857
6	Nico Rosberg	Mercedes GP	1:27.649	1:27.141	1:26.952
7	Robert Kubica	Renault	1:27.766	1:27.426	1:27.039
8	Felipe Massa	Ferrari	1:27.993	1:27.200	1:27.082
9	Vitaly Petrov	Renault	1:27.620	1:27.387	1:27.430
10	Kamui Kobayashi	BK Sauber-Ferrari	1:28.158	1:27.434	1:28.122
11	Adrian F'n Sutil	Force India-Mercedes	1:27.951	1:27.525
12	HWMNBN	Ferrari	1:27.857	1:27.612
13	Pete Rose	BK Sauber-Ferrari	1:28.147	1:27.879
14	Sebastien Buemi	STR-Ferrari	1:28.534	1:28.273
15	Rubens Barrichello	Williams-Cosworth	1:28.336	1:28.392
16	NKOTT	STR-Ferrari	1:28.460	1:28.540
17	Nico Hulkenberg	Williams-Cosworth	1:28.227	1:28.841
18	Vitantonio Liuzzi	Force India-Mercedes	1:28.958
19	Jarno Trulli	Lotus-Cosworth	1:30.237
20	Heikki Kovalainen	Lotus-Cosworth	1:30.519
21	Timo Glockenspiel	Virgin-Cosworth	1:30.744
22	Bruno Senna	HRT-Cosworth	1:31.266
23	Lucas di Grassi	Virgin-Cosworth	1:31.989
24	Cowboy Karun Chandhok	HRT-Cosworth	1:32.060

Yeah, like anybody is gonna kick Red Bull off of pole.  Though to be honest, it looked like Lewis Hamilton had it cold at the end of Q3.  He was maybe 20 seconds behind Webber on the track, and when Webber turned in the fastest sector 1 time of the day, Hamilton bettered it.  Webber set the fastest sector 2 time, but Hamilton had been crusing there all day.  It seemed that for once we'd get a non-Red Bull car on pole.

Then Slappy Schumacher had to go and ruin it for us by spinning off on Quad-8 and making a fine try for the barriers, coming up just a few feet short.  Unfortunately, he was between Webber and Hamilton on track, meaning that when the local yellow flag came out, Hamilton had to slow down... but Webber didn't.  So long, pole hunt.  Obviously we don't know that Lewis would have been faster than the Red Bull driver, but it looked like it would have been close.

As far as Ferrari's sandbox went, it looked more like Ferrari's litterbox.  Massa could only manage a lackluster eighth, while HWMNBN screwed up on his final two laps in Q2 and was bumped out.  So much for "no more mistakes."  For some reason, I am not unhappy with this result.

So there's our grid... and Webber is suddenly looking like he's in the clear for a three race winning streak.  Will it pan out?  We'll see tomorrow!  Come back on Sunday for the F1 Update!

Posted by: Wonderduck at 10:05 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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