European GP - Another exciting Sunday in prospect
Valencia, 25 June – The Spanish street circuit delivered another thrilling qualifying on Saturday afternoon. Therefore, in a season that seems to be throwing up more and more excitement with each passing race, there is no reason to think that tomorrow’s European Grand Prix will not continue in that vein. While the weather is unlikely to deliver the deluge that brought the Canadian race to life, there are plenty of factors pointing at an interesting couple of hours on Sunday.
Okay, so Sebastian Vettel has recorded Red Bull’s eighth pole from eight qualifying sessions and team-mate Mark Webber has ensured the team has locked out the front row, but the lap times were very close during qualifying and experience shows that once the red lights go out to signal the start of the Grand Prix, those performance gaps appear to close up even more. Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro has one car on the second row – Fernando Alonso in fourth spot – and one car on the third row courtesy of Felipe Massa in fifth place. Past form at the Valencia street circuit would have pointed to the two Prancing Horse drivers having a difficult afternoon as overtaking was never that easy here, but this year with the 150º Italia cars proving to be very good off the grid and another double-DRS zone to aid overtaking, a podium finish has to be the target. Apart from the two Red Bulls, Lewis Hamilton currently stands between the Ferrari men and the podium as the Englishman qualified third, while Felipe shares the third row with the other McLaren of Jenson Button in sixth place.
We could witness several different strategies in terms of when and how often to stop to change tyres and here there is an additional element of uncertainty as the Prime tyre, the harder one, is a Medium compound that has never been raced before. Both Felipe and Fernando will be doing their utmost to get a good result, because championship considerations aside, the Brazilian is keen to put a run of bad luck behind him, while the Spaniard will want to give his home fans something to cheer about, by doing better than his fifth place finish in the Spanish GP in Barcelona five weeks ago.
Credit: Ferrari S.p.A. (www.ferrari.com)
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