F1 News
Date: 24/June/2012
Reigning F1 world champion Sebastian Vettel took his second consecutive pole, and third of the season, during qualifying for the European round at Valencia on Saturday.
The German made good use of new parts for his Red Bull and used only a single run in the final part of qualifying to claim pole by 0.324s over McLaren’s title leader Lewis Hamilton.
“One shot there in the end, which turned out to turned out to be a very good lap,” said Vettel.
“I knew that going at the end if the track comes in a little bit and tying the lap together it should be good enough maybe to look at pole.
“In the end it was a surprising gap, but all in all I felt very good this weekend. The boys have been working incredibly hard in the garage, all the people in the factory as well to make sure that we bring a couple of new parts to the car.”
Pressed on the actual number of developments, thought to include a revised front wing, floor and rear sidepod design, Vettel admitted: “A couple is two… maybe we have bought more than two.”
He added: “The first time they were on the car was on Friday. Obviously we try to build the parts so that they are reliable. I’m not worried [in that respect]. It will be hot but it’s not the worst race of the year for the car in terms of the ambient conditions.”
Hamilton was surprised with his performance.
“I expected to be a lot further back,” he said. “We’ve struggled all weekend and going into qualifying we had to make some guesses as to what kind of set-up we wanted to change. It seemed to work OK and I’m really, really surprised.”
Starting behind Vettel and Hamilton will be Pastor Maldonado (Williams) and Romain Grosjean (Lotus), with Kimi Raikkonen (Lotus) and Nico Rosberg (Mercedes) forming row three.
Among the big names to lose out during the ultra-close early stages of qualifying was second in the championship Fernando Alonso, who will start just eleventh for Ferrari.
But with F1 2012 producing an incredible seven different winners from the opening seven races Vettel, winner at Valencia for the past two seasons is making no predictions.
“We have seen too much this year to sit here on Saturday afternoon and predict what’s going to happen,” he said.
“I think Ferrari has been very competitive. Williams have been quick yesterday on their long runs. Lotus, I think they’ve proven in Bahrain, the first time we had hot conditions, that they’re up there.”
Hamilton - who took his first victory of the season last time in Canada - also believes there is an excellent chance of seeing an eighth different winner on Sunday in the form of Raikkonen or Grosjean.
“I think because it’s so hot, the Lotus cars look massively competitive. I think they’re going to be the ones to watch out for tomorrow,” he declared.
Hamilton will start the race with a slim two-point lead over Alonso, but rejected the suggestion he is now poised to make pull big points over the Spaniard.
“I anticipate that [Ferrari] will come through very strongly throughout the race,” Hamilton explained. “They have great long run pace and can look after the tyres better than others, due to low speed downforce.
“I also know that Ferrari had upgrades this week - at least so Fernando told me - so I anticipate that they are going to be very competitive.
“Again, as I said, I’m very surprised for us because we didn’t have any upgrades this weekend and so to be where we are is a big bonus for us.”
Vettel, the winner in Bahrain, starts third in the championship, just one point from Alonso.
No comments:
Post a Comment