Hamilton pole, Alonso plays down rain gamble


F1 News
Date: 25/November/2012



Lewis Hamilton will start his final F1 Grand Prix for McLaren from pole position at Interlagos, Brazil on Sunday.

The Englishman, moving to Mercedes for 2013, edged out team-mate Jenson Button by just 0.055s at the end of a qualifying session that began in the wet and finished in the dry.

“I’m grateful to be able to put the car on the front row and have the last one-two in qualifying with Jenson in the same team,” said Hamilton. “I hope that we can turn it into something really positive in the race.

“I think the weather is going to be tricky so it's definitely going to make it more of a lottery, but we've put ourselves in a really good position and we are just going to do the best job we can.”

Watching the weather especially closely will be title fighters Sebastian Vettel and Fernando Alonso.

Both were out-qualified by their team-mates on Saturday, Red Bull’s Vettel managing fourth on the grid - alongside Mark Webber - with Alonso just eighth quickest.

That also left the Ferrari driver, who needs to outscore Vettel by 14 points, three places behind local team-mate Felipe Massa.

Alonso insisted it had been a normal qualifying, given Ferrari’s lack of one-lap pace, and played down rumours that they have gambled on a wetter set-up in the hope of exploiting the forecast rain in the race.

“Obviously, I am hoping for a chaotic race and so the rain could be an important factor even if, in the wet, it is riskier for everyone,” said Alonso, adding: “The car is not particularly set up for the wet.”

Ferrari technical director Pat Fry clearly believes there is a high chance of rain and it seems hard to imagine that the team would not therefore have taken some measures to optimise the car for such conditions.

“All the forecasts are predicting rain in the coming hours and there’s a high chance of having a wet race,” he said. “We will therefore have to be ready to manage a race that looks like being incident packed, as is the tradition in the Brazilian Grand Prix.”

A post-qualifying penalty for Pastor Maldonado (Williams) will move Alonso up to seventh on the grid.

That could become sixth if Ferrari repeats its decision to trigger a deliberate grid penalty for Massa, but it seems the Brazilian will be allowed to keep fifth for his home race - perhaps with the expectation of trying to mix it up with Vettel just ahead of him.

Vettel, chasing a third title in a row at the age of just 25, heads into the race in confident mood: “We’re in good shape and have been quick all weekend, so let’s see what we can do in the race - we will try our best.”

Alonso won his previous titles with Renault in 2005 and 2006.

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