Pole Position
Vettel secured RedBull’s first ever pole position
Sebastian Vettel secured Red Bull Racing’s debut pole position in a thrilling qualifying session in Shanghai this afternoon. Completing just one run in Q3, Vettel lapped in a time of 1m36.184s to displace team-mate Mark Webber from top spot, the Australian had clocked a 1m36.466s. Q2 had seen Vettel top the times, but the major surprise in Q3 was Fernando Alonso, who secured second place with a lap of 1m36.381s.
Behind Vettel, Alonso and Webber, the Brawn duo of Rubens Barrichello and Jenson Button endured their worst qualifying session of the season in fourth and fifth respectively, on times of 1m36.493s and 1m36.532s. Toyota’s Jarno Trulli was next in 6th (1m36.835s), followed by Williams’ Nico Rosberg (1m37.397s), Kimi Raikkonen (1m38.089s), Lewis Hamilton (1m38.595s) and the ever-impressive Seabstien Buemi (1m39.321s).
Before the Malaysian Grand Prix
After a very surprising start to the 2009 season at Melbourne, we are about to see second race of the season at Malaysia. This season the race will start two hours later than past years. There is a %80 chance of rain during the race and since the race will start late, it may be darker and this may cause visibility problems for the drivers.
At Friday during both practice sessions, teams were very closely matched and the competition was very high as expected. Ferrari seemed better than last race and both drivers managed to do very consistent and fast laps during their long stints. RedBull and Williams seemed to be in a good position too whereas Brawn’s and Toyota’s struggled with their cars balance a bit. One thing very clear is that the softer tires offer better durability and less performance drop during the long stints than Melbourne. For example almost all the fastest lap times came during the long stints (13 – 15 laps) with softer compounds. This was not the case at last weekend’s grand prix. Let’s look at the times deeper and try to analyze the practice lap times;
Melbourne Practice
2009 season has finally started today with a lot of questions and concerns in mind. Despite these two sessions were only practice sessions, we have surprisingly three teams which are the subject of diffuser protests at the top of the standings. They are closely followed by Red Bull, Ferrari and Renault while BMW and McLaren were near the bottom. As you know practice is only for setup the car and evaluate different options. So, Let’s try to analyze which teams are really fast and which teams are not.
Ferrari seemed better in the first practice whereas they had some difficulties in the second one. They are very consistent over the long runs and Massa was running in low and medium 27′s in one of his ten lap stints. Thinking that most of the fastest times of their rivals have been set during the short stints Ferrari is now in a strong position for the race. As far as race fuel loads concerned, they have a very solid car with the prime tires from the beginning. But their problems started to rise when they opted to softer tires. They were almost without grip and missing brake points at every corner. This is mostly because of the graining at their rear tires. Also as I realized Massa was pressing KERS button a couple of times during a lap. So, they are probably using KERS not just once, but a couple of times during a lap which is logical for the circuits like Melbourne with mpre than one circuits.
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