Lewis Hamilton claimed pole position for tomorrow’s Brazilian Grand Prix in his final race for McLaren, just 500ths of a second ahead of team mate Jenson Button. Both Red Bull’s start on the second row; Mark Webber edging out championship favourite Sebastian Vettel by almost two tenths of a second while Vettel’s championship rival Fernando Alonso starts from seventh after Williams’ Pastor Maldonado was demoted 10 places for missing a call to the weighbridge after qualifying.
As usual, I’ll start with Qualifying 1; Hamilton topped the timesheets with a time of 1:15.075, followed by Williams’ Bruno Senna 0.258 seconds behind and team mate Button a further 0.123 seconds adrift. Lotus’ Romain Grosjean joined the usual suspects going out in Q1 after a collision with the HRT of Pedro de la Rosa going through the final kink onto the main straight.
Qualifying 2 saw seven time world champion Michael Schumacher in his final qualifying session fall at the second hurdle, setting a time only good enough for 14th place while his younger compatriot made it through to Qualifying 3. Paul di Resta, Bruno Senna, Sergio Perez, Kamui Kobayashi, Daniel Ricciardo and Jean Eric Vergne joined Schumacher in sitting out the final qualifying session.
As mentioned in the opening paragraph; Hamilton, Button, Webber and Vettel start on the front two rows while Alonso will start from seventh, hopefully Ferrari will allow Massa to start fifth and not elect to have the Brazilian demoted to 10th like in Austin a week ago. Force India’s Nico Hulkenberg will start in an excellent sixth place benefiting from Maldonado’s demotion to 16th as did Kimi Raikkonen, Nico Rosberg and Paul di Resta, starting from eighth, ninth and tenth respectively.
Top 10 Starting Grid for the Brazilian Grand Prix 2012.
| 1. Lewis Hamilton (McLaren) 2. Jenson Button (McLaren) 3. Mark Webber (Red Bull) 4. Sebastian Vettel (Red Bull) 5. Felipe Massa (Ferrari) |
6. Nico Hulkenberg (Force India) 7. Fernando Alonso (Ferrari) 8. Kimi Raikkonen (Lotus) 9. Nico Rosberg (Mercedes) 10. Paul di Resta (Force India) |