Jul 30, 2011
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Jaime Alguersuari will start tomorrow’s Hungarian Grand Prix, the eleventh round of the World Championship from 16th place on the outside of Row 8 of the grid.
Sébastien Buemi did not get further than Q1 today and set the eighteenth fastest time. However, after the Stewards decided last Sunday that he caused the collision with Nick Heidfeld’s Renault at the Nurburgring, our Swiss driver takes a five place penalty, which means he will start from 23rd on the last row of the grid, unless any other driver penalties are applied in the meantime. Because of this and therefore with nothing much to gain, Sébastien did not even use the Option tyre, the Super Soft, thus saving plenty of fresh rubber for tomorrow’s 70 laps. That could be a big advantage to help him make his way up the order. Jaime also has some nice new tyres up his sleeve, given that when it was clear he would not improve his lap time enough to actually move further up the grid, he only did the one run in Q2. It’s become something of a lucky mantra to say we always go better in the race than in qualifying and that really needs to be the case tomorrow, if we want to return to scoring points after drawing a blank for the first time in four races, last weekend in Germany.
While other races so far this year have seen more overtaking than in the past, getting ahead of another car will still be a tough task at this incredibly tight track with its sixteen corners and only one real straight and even that is not such a long one. Therefore, coming up with a clever strategy and an ability to react quickly to how the tyres behave will be the key factor to getting a good result tomorrow. It’s true that a good grid position has been fractionally less important than in past years, because of the advent of KERS, DRS and the Pirelli tyres, but at the Hungaroring, having a clear view of the start-finish straight on the run down to Turn 1 on the opening lap will be a big advantage. And that advantage goes to Sebastian Vettel who fought back from a difficult Friday to post the pole position time this afternoon in his Red Bull. Alongside him on the front row of the grid is the winner of the German Grand Prix one week ago, Lewis Hamilton in the McLaren. The second row is headed by the second McLaren of Jenson Button and the first of the Ferraris, with Felipe Massa in fourth spot. Row three is shared by fifth placed Fernando Alonso in the other Ferrari and Mark Webber in the second Red Bull. Our two boys share their starts with the Williams South American duo: Jaime on the outside of Brazil’s Rubens Barrichello and Sébastien outside Argentina’s Pastor Maldonaldo.
Credit: Toro Rosso (www.scuderiatororosso.com)
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