Red Bull’s Sebastian Vettel resumed the 2010 where he left off in 2009 by scoring an impressive pole position for the season-opening Bahrain Grand Prix this afternoon in Sakhir. The German went almost one and a half tenths quicker than his nearest rival in the decisive Q3 part of qualifying, but was the first front-runner to set his benchmark, a 1m54.101s, at the end of Q3, forcing a nervous wait to see if could hold onto the position.
In the end, Ferrari’s Felipe Massa and Fernando Alonso were unable to keep pace with the youngster with Massa taking a front row slot on his return from injury. He set a time of 1m54.242s to go three tenths quicker than Alonso’s 1m54.608s, but crucially lost out to Vettel in the fight for pole. Fourth place went to McLaren’s Lewis Hamilton, who set a time of 1m55.217s to go over a second slower than Vettel. However the Briton was considerably quicker than team-mate Button who managed just eighth place on a 1m55.672s after a disappointing qualifying for him.