Hamilton takes first pole for Mercedes in China

Lewis Hamilton has claimed his first pole position of 2013, and his first pole position with Mercedes, in a Chinese Grand Prix qualifying session where tyre strategy took centre stage.

Kimi Raikkonen lines up second on the grid next to Hamilton, with Fernando Alonso just behind in third. A slow final sector on Nico Rosberg’s flying lap in Q3 saw the German miss out on a front row place and post a lap time good enough for just fourth. Massa will start from fifth in another strong outing for Ferrari. Lotus’ second car of Romain Grosjean starts from sixth, whilst a stunning qualifying performance from Daniel Ricciardo sees a Toro Rosso sit seventh to start tomorrow’s race. Continued struggles with car development and progress at McLaren meant that Jenson Button was unable to qualify higher than eighth, but will start tomorrow’s race ahead of Sebastian Vettel.

Going into turn 14, and with just one flying lap to set a time in Q3, Vettel locked up forcing him to run wide off-track. The result was an aborted lap, and a failure to set a qualifying time in Q3. Vettel will start in ninth ahead of Nico Hulkenberg’s Sauber – the only other driver who did not set a lap time in the final qualifying session.

Qualifying got off to a slow start today when soaring track temperatures in Shanghai forced teams to keep their drivers in the garage and preserve their tyres as long as possible. It took nearly a full ten minutes, or half the qualifying session, for even one car to appear on track. With just 8 of 20 minutes remaining in the first session, Marussia’s Jules Bianchi posted the first flying lap. Unwilling to churn through a higher than usual set of tyres in qualifying, team strategy for qualifying today generally seemed to revolve around one run fast laps.

Q2 on-track action started somewhat quicker start than the session prior, with the Red Bull Racing car of Sebastian Vettel leading out the pack in a rare move by the Red Bull team. Fifteen minutes later, and an interesting mix of cars and drivers were lost as the chequered flag dropped. Force India came into this weekend with high hopes for their drivers, yet both cars failed to produce a top ten qualifying result with Paul di Resta starting from eleventh tomorrow whilst teammate Adrian Sutil will line up in thirteenth, split by the McLaren of Sergio Perez.

Mark Webber was the ‘surprise’ drop-out in the second qualifying session. With Red Bull instructing him to ‘save as much fuel as possible’, the Aussie was forced to stop the car on track, taking him out of possible contention in the third and final session of the day. Though he qualified in fourteenth place ahead of the Williams car of Pastor Maldonado, FIA rules state a car must return to the pits on its own power – failure to do so can result in starting from the back of the grid for tomorrow’s race. Jean-Eric Vergne will start sixteenth, unable to find the same possible pace shown by teammate Daniel Ricciardo, whose strong drive saw a Toro Rosso car finally make the top ten shoot-out.

At the back of the grid; the ‘usual suspects’ of Caterham and Marussia, coupled with a Williams and a Sauber. Williams rookie Valtteri Bottas struggled with the handling of his car all session and unable to recover after a minor error in Turn 1, the Finn would qualify just seventeenth with Sauber rookie Esteban Gutierrez behind. Marussia’s Jules Bianchi qualifies in nineteenth ahead of teammate Max Chilton. The two Caterham’s of Charles Pic and Giedo van der Garde make up the final two places of the Chinese Grand Prix grid.

Today’s qualifying results for the Marussia F1 Team stand to show once again the progress the team is making towards contending in the mid-field, as well as re-affirming their ability to be a stronger team than rivals Caterham, who has struggled so far this year.

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