Sebastian Vettel, Pole position, Hungaroring
Sebastian Vetel (1:18.773) took a dominant pole position for the Hungarian Grand Prix as Red Bull Racing once again locked out the front row. Vettel was the only driver to lap below 1m19s as team mate Mark Webber stopped the clock in 1:19.184, the 0.41s margin between the pair bigger than usual.
The clean side of the grid, traditionally, is even more important in Hungary than elsewhere and Vettel said: “Ideally I’ll just be able to go straight. We found the problem from last week, where I didn’t have a good start, and I’m confident we will have a good one tomorrow. We know how important it is — I was second last year, Fernando was on pole and if I’d been on the clean side it would have been a different race. But 70 laps is tough for the cars and drivers and there’s no points for Saturday.”
Fernando Alonso (1:19.987) was the closest challenger to the Red Bulls but the Ferrari was fully 1.2s from Vettel’s pace. “We found a big gap to Red Bull from yesterday practice and I think maximised our potential,” Alonso said. “Hopefully tomorrow we can make it a difficult race for them. It’s hard to overtake and the first lap will be 60-70% of the final result, so hopefully we can do a good start as we did at Hockenheim last weekend. Last weekend the Ferrari was the quickest car in the race, here we are 1.2s off, which is a surprise, but others are worse.”
Felipe Massa (1:20.331) put the second Ferrari fourth on the grid, 0.16s clear of Lewis Hamilton (1:20.499) who is the only McLaren representative in the top 10, reigning world champion Jenson Button starting the race from 11th. Nico Rosberg (1:21.082) put the first Mercedes sixth on the grid, team mate Michael Schumacher never happy with the feel of the car around the twisty Hungaroring and 0.82s from Rosberg in Q2, which translated into 14th.
Vitaly Petrov (1:21.229) outqualified Robert Kubica (1:21.328) for the first time this season after the Pole made a mistake in sector one on his lone Q3 run and eventually set his grid time on the second flying lap with the option rubber past its best. Pedro de la Rosa (1:21.411) did a strong job to put the first Sauber ninth, with Nico Hulkenberg (1:21.710) completing the top 10 with the first Cosworth-powered AT&T Williams FW32, two slots ahead of team mate Rubens Barrichello.
Timo Glock (1:24.050) set the fastest time of the new teams right at the death in Q1, beating HeikkiKovalainen’s Lotus by just 0.07s.
