Good job Ferrari, the F10 does seem to be faster than it looks.
Great job by Vettel, but no surprise really.
Mercedes and McLaren really close, not surprised either.
Surprising that no Williams managed to make it into Q3, and a bit surprising Kubica and Sutil did instead. Looks like Williams could be stuck being a mid-field team this year once again.
Qualifying in this case isn't everything. Now tomorrow we will see which drivers can manage their fuel loads and tires the best.
Miguel wrote:MattyT wrote:Yep cant say Im a fan of the compromised setups in Q3. Its still not the flat out fast as they can go Q3 we were after!
It's actually worse than fueled Q3! They were... conserving the tyres! What the heck? I hope it's just a Bahrain "feature".
Of course they were conserving tires, especially on a hot track like this. You will see the entire season drivers trying to conserve tires and pitting for as little tires as possible, so obviously Q3 will be compromised.
WhiteBlue wrote:I think that Sutil could be well placed with his hard tyres on P10. He can take a more agressive approach in the first 10 laps and that should give him an option to make some places while the soft runners will be struggling to keep their tyres from falling apart. In the end he should also have an edge with a lighter car on soft tyres. If he manages to keep out of clashes he could bring some good points home.
Massa beating Alonso was nice to see. Rosberg faster than Schumi was expected after the practise and Q1-Q2.
I think that Twobens will start on hard tyres.
Depending on track conditions, soft tires might be worse at the end of the race. Different teams making different predictions. Lets not forget what happened last year in Bahrain, when Toyota made the wrong tire choice and it eliminated any chance they had of winning their first race.
Fil wrote:pipex wrote:The Force India looks strong. Poor guys at McLaren, their faces said it all...
Now we only need to wait until Red Bull implements the "stalling" rear wing and the season is over hahaha.
Don't speak too soon. Quali is more detached from race pace than ever before.
Red Bull talk has been about their rear tyre degradation compared to everyone else.
If anything, Ferrari are looking the strongest for the race, going by their FP1 & FP2 long-run pace.
There's a very long race on tomoro that will shake up this grid quite heavily.
Exactly. Some people don't realize that no refueling means big chances in terms of strategy, and also how cars behave out on track, and how they handle tires. More stress is put on the brakes, suspension, the list goes on.
Reliability will be more important than ever, and the famous Newey unreliability is showing up again. Red Bull was very lucky last year to be relatively reliable, but they could easily end up this season back to 2008 levels of poor reliability. Both Vettel and Webber suffered different reliability issues during practice. Also the fact that the brake calipers on the RB6 are mounted at the bottom of the discs means more chance of reliability problems for Red Bull.
