F1-Blog

First off apologies to my regular readers on the lack of postings recently, real life has been dragging me away, but enough of that an on with the qualifying session.

The Turkish GP is a track where everyone including Ferrari thought they would do well, and as it turns out they have, but probably not as well as they were hoping for.

Massa takes the pole position, but it’s behind him where things get interesting.

Q1 was interesting for two reasons, 1 Ralf Schumacher again struggled a lot more than his team mate in the Toyota, even after both cars had been showing good pace in practice sessions, and Anthony Davidson made his car look way and above what it should have done, and made it through easily into Q2.

Q2 again showed that Anthony was quicker than he should be, he showed great character, pushing the SA as hard as it is possible in the famous corner 8. He was only just not able to get through to Q3, setting a time of 1m 28.002s, posting better times than both of the Red Bull drivers.

Q3 showed that none of the teams are on the same level as the Ferrari’s and McLaren’s with the four cars posting far better times (about half a second) than the drivers on the third row.

Lewis showed that the practice session times where he has been constantly faster than his team mate where in fact accurate and takes the second slot on the grid. Kimi seemed to struggle with front end balance at some points, so perhaps has gone for a race setup rather than a qualifying one, and slots in third, with Fernando Alonso dropping in fourth, with his fastest lap set on the harder tyre compound.

 Another interesting point is that Heikki again out qualified his team mate in the Renault’s, showing his raw pace is certainly there, if only they would give him a fast car.

So the grid looks like this

1 Felipe Massa Ferrari 1:27.329
2 Lewis Hamilton McLaren-Mercedes 1:27.373
3 Kimi Räikkönen Ferrari 1:27.546
4 Fernando Alonso McLaren-Mercedes 1:27.574
5 Robert Kubica BMW 1:27.722
6 Nick Heidfeld BMW 1:28.037
7 Heikki Kovalainen Renault 1:28.491
8 Nico Rosberg Williams-Toyota 1:28.501
9 Jarno Trulli Toyota 1:28.740
10 Giancarlo Fisichella Renault 1:29.322
11 Anthony Davidson Super Aguri-Honda
12 Mark Webber Red Bull-Renault
13 David Coulthard Red Bull-Renault
14 Rubens Barrichello Honda
15 Jenson Button Honda
16 Alexander Wurz Williams-Toyota
17 Vitantonio Liuzzi STR-Ferrari
18 Ralf Schumacher Toyota
19 Takuma Sato Super Aguri-Honda
20 Sebastian Vettel STR-Ferrari
21 Adrian Sutil Spyker-Ferrari
22 Sakon Yamamoto Spyker-Ferrari