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Vettel storms to pole position

For the first race of the season

By

13 March 2010 - 13:18

Sebastian Vettel claimed pole position for Red Bull Racing for Sunday’s Bahrain Grand Prix.

A 1’54’’401 fastest lap time was enough for the German driver to bag the first pole of the year. He will be joined on the front row by Ferrari’s Felipe Massa. Fernando Alonso and Lewis Hamilton will line up on the second row.

Let’s have a quick look at how the session panned out:

Having completed only two laps in the the morning’s free practice session, Lucas di Grassi was the first out on track. The Virgin Racing driver tried to make up for the time lost and get more laps under his belt.

Karun Chandhok meanwhile was finally able to join the action and did his best not to get in anyone’s way as he got to grips with his car. The Indian driver completed seven laps.

He and teammate Bruno Senna were the first drivers eliminated at the end of Q1, along with the Virgin and Lotus drivers. Jaime Alguersuari also failed to make it through to Q2.

Fernando Alonso was once again fastest with Vettel and Sutil second and third.

The second part of qualifying proved a bit more exciting with the drivers having to fight it harder to make it through to Q3.

Sebastian Vettel was the first to leave the pits, as soon as the lights turned green, and set an impressive first timed lap of 1’54’’035 – a few hundredths faster than Alonso’s best effort in practice. No one was able to match the pace of the RBR driver who clocked a 1’53’’883 lap time on his final attempt.

He was nearly two tenths faster than Alonso. Webber put the other Red Bull up into third place.

Out went Petrov, Kobayashi, Buemi, De la Rosa, Hulkenberg, Liuzzi and Barrichello.

Race engineers had to make difficult decisions ahead of Q3 as the top 10 drivers will have to start the race with the tyres they put their fastest laps on. They could either go for pace on the softer tyres or race durability on the harder ones. And let’s just not forget that they will have to start the race on maximum fuel loads as refueling has now been banned.

Vettel did only one lap to seal pole position, lapping one tenth faster than Massa. Alonso took third spot. Those three were the only drivers to dip below the 1’55 mark.

Nico Rosberg was fifth fastest for Mercedes GP and outpaced his teammate Michael Schumacher. The German will line up on the fourth row of the grid alongside reigning World Champion Jenson Button.

Pos.	Driver	Team	Q1 time	Q2 time	Q3 time
01	Sebastian Vettel	Red Bull Renault	1.55.029	1.53.883	1.54.101
02	Felipe Massa	Ferrari	1.55.313	1.54.331	1.54.242
03	Fernando Alonso	Ferrari	1.54.612	1.54.172	1.54.608
04	Lewis Hamilton	McLaren Mercedes	1.55.341	1.54.707	1.55.217
05	Nico Rosberg	Mercedes GP	1.55.463	1.54.682	1.55.241
06	Mark Webber	Red Bull Renault	1.55.298	1.54.318	1.55.284
07	Michael Schumacher	Mercedes GP	1.55.593	1.55.105	1.55.524
08	Jenson Button	McLaren Mercedes	1.55.715	1.55.168	1.55.672
09	Robert Kubica	Renault	1.55.511	1.54.963	1.55.885
10	Adrian Sutil	Force India Mercedes	1.55.213	1.54.996	1.56.309
—	----------------	---------------	----------	----------	----------
11	Rubens Barrichello	Williams Cosworth	1.55.969	1.55.330
12	Vitantonio Liuzzi	Force India Mercedes	1.55.628	1.55.653
13	Nico Hulkenberg	Williams Cosworth	1.56.375	1.55.857
14	Pedro de la Rosa	Sauber Ferrari	1.56.428	1.56.237
15	Sébastien Buemi	Toro Rosso Ferrari	1.56.189	1.56.265
16	Kamui Kobayashi	Sauber Ferrari	1.56.541	1.56.270
17	Vitaly Petrov	Renault	1.56.167	1.56.619
—	----------------	---------------	----------	----------	----------
18	Jaime Alguersuari	Toro Rosso Ferrari	1.57.071
19	Timo Glock	Virgin Racing Cosworth	1.59.728
20	Jarno Trulli	Lotus Cosworth	1.59.852
21	Heikki Kovalainen	Lotus Cosworth	2.00.313
22	Lucas di Grassi	Virgin Racing Cosworth	2.00.587
23	Bruno Senna	HRT F1 Cosworth	2.03.240
24	Karun Chandhok	HRT F1 Cosworth	2.04.904