Red Bull qualifying form ends mapping rumours

F1 News

Date: 25/06/2011

Paddock talk leading into this weekend's Valencia F1 round had centred upon who would lose out most from the first of the new technical rule changes.

From Valencia onwards cars will have to race with the same engine-mapping as they used in qualifying, thus preventing any special qualifying settings. The next change will be a ban on off-throttle blown diffusers, from Silverstone.

With Red Bull taking all seven pole positions prior to Valencia, it had been speculated that the engine-mapping rule might bring that perfect run to an end.

It didn't. 

Instead runaway world championship leader Sebastian Vettel took his seventh pole of the year by 0.188sec from team-mate Mark Webber, with McLaren's Lewis Hamilton best of the rest, 0.405sec from pole.

"There was obviously a lot of talk [about the engine mapping rule] going into this grand prix and there will be a lot of talk before the next grand prix. But everyone will lose out something," shrugged Vettel. "People expect us to lose more than others but that’s where I disagree."

"We came here and we didn’t expect any difference," added the straight-talking Webber. "You guys wrote a lot about it, some other teams spoke a lot about it. Maybe some people in our team spoke a bit, but in the end we’ve just got on with our job.

"If we got [beat] here, it would be fair and square, not because of that [rule]. It was just a fair battle going into today and the results are a fair reflection of what happened today."

Turning to Sunday's race, Vettel - eager to banish memories of his last lap defeat, at the hands of Jenson Button, in Canada two weeks' ago - is wary that the use of two DRS zones at Valencia could make life especially hard for the driver in front.

"Obviously if you are in the front and the people are close enough behind then it is tricky. And it is tricky not only once, but twice here," he said of the DRS zones. "They are quite long straights and both times you have a reasonable hard stop so you can try something under braking.

"At the moment it is not yet clear how many [tyre] stops we will have and how efficient overtaking will be, so we will see. It is also a long race and it will be quite hot tomorrow."

Having endured two tough races, with accidents and penalties at Monaco, then a race-ending collision with McLaren team-mate Button in Canada, Hamilton badly needs a solid race.

After managing just seventh in final fee practice, the Briton was buoyed by his qualifying form and looking forward to the race.

"I wasn’t expecting to be so high up," he admitted. "After P3 we were struggling a little trying to switch the tyres on, but the guys did a great job in analysing some of the data to improve in qualifying.

"I’m quite happy with the pace that we had. I think it’s good for us to be able to be up ahead of the Ferraris this weekend, compared to the previous race. I think we should be able to have a good race from there."

Spanish star Fernando Alonso will start fourth, with Ferrari team-mate Felipe Massa fifth and Button sixth.