Oct 15, 2011
Getty Images
Eleventh place on the grid for Jaime Alguersuari and thirteenth, right behind the Spaniard for Sébastien Buemi was the encouraging outcome of qualifying this afternoon in sunny Yeongam. Yes, sunny, as the weather forecast continues to be spot on and we were able to enjoy a full day of dry track action and the crowd wasn’t bad either for a Saturday in a country that’s not really immersed in F1 culture. We have definitely been making progress with the TR6 in recent races and developing this year’s car at this late stage is not an indulgence: not only can it prove useful as we try and catch Sauber in the Constructors’ Championship, but with not too many changes to the 2012 technical regulations, anything we learn now might be useful for next year’s car.
Both men comfortably got through from Q1 to Q2, running one set of Softs and one set of Supersofts in the first slice of action, before doing just a single run on the Option tyre in Q2. Jaime came within a whisker of taking part in Q3 for the first time since Belgium, but in the end he missed out by fractions. But you know what we’re going to say next of course….starting from the clean side of the track in eleventh place and having the freedom to choose which tyres to fit for the start of the race might be more of an advantage than lining up tenth on the grid.
Formula 1 is not really the environment for superstition, although you’d be surprised at how many drivers have lucky charms or habits they stick to at the race track. However, could Jaime’s strong showing owe something to the fact that a real live frog hopped up to him in our team hospitality unit? Frogs in some cultures are seen as animals that bring good luck and after all, animal-loving Jaime carefully picked up his little green friend and carried it to freedom.
As for the front end of the grid, it’s a case of the same old story, with the top three teams filling the top six slots. This time it was Lewis Hamilton who took his first pole of the season in his McLaren and he shares the front row with Sebastian Vettel in the Red Bull. Row 2 features their respective team-mates, Jenson Button in third with Mark Webber fourth, while the two Ferrari men share row 3, Felipe Massa outpacing Fernando Alonso for the second consecutive weekend. With both Red Bulls in the top two rows, one can hardly say the Milton Keynes squad is struggling, but just as in Suzuka last Sunday, they don’t seem quite so comfortable at the moment, which might make for another exciting battle for supremacy over 55 laps of this interesting track. How many pit stops? That might well depend on the big shiny orange ball in the sky, commonly known as the sun: another hazy day like today and track temperature could be lower than predicted, producing less tyre degradation and fewer stops. We will have to wait and see…
Credit: Scuderia Toro Rosso (www.scuderiatororosso.com)
No comments:
Post a Comment