Mark Webber set the fastest time of the final qualifying session in Barcelona to snatch pole position from team-mate Sebastian Vettel, by two-tenths of a second. The two McLaren drivers tried hard but Lewis Hamilton ended up third with a time that was a second off Webber’s best. Jenson Button ended up fifth, being caught out late in the session by a run from Fernando Alonso, who snatched fourth. It was not a great session as all the drivers did only one run as they saved tyres for the race. Vitaly Petrov was sixth overall, ahead of Nico Rosberg with Felipe Massa eighth and Pastor Maldonado ninth. Michael Schumacher will start 10th, but did not go out in the session.
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joeblogsf1 
Sorry to post off topic, but I was re-directed to this link and thought it was quite an interesting way to monetize a site. I could be way behind the trend on this one, and maybe you have already looked at it but I thought I would suggest it anyway.
As usual thanks for the great reports! I thought it particularly interesting that Alonso was incredibly happy with his quali time – clearly Ferrari did not expect to get a time that high. Does that indicate that they are lacking pace, or that they decided to optimise their set-up purely for the race, thus compromising quali time?
Ah forgot the link I was talking about above!
http://flattr.com/
Joe,
Do you see a one-run in Q3 to be a trend that will carry on for the rest of the season? Prior to today’s qualy, it almost seemed an advantage just to do well in Q2 and stay out of Q3!
Nice lap MW!
Should probably have kept this for something more on topic, but since the guy’s rarely captured saying anything, a new interview (well more op-ed) with Mateschitz:
http://www.businessweek.com/print/magazine/content/11_22/b4230064852768.htm
This KERS today, gone tomorrow, thing is bugging me though. Not one for now.
– j
Wow! For a guy that had just won a F1 GP pole, zippy looked less than happy! Thinking about a trip to see Helmut Marko and explaining away why he had beaten Seb perhaps?
Or what else could he be thinking about? His market value for next year? Who will he drive for next year? dinner? A post race party with Eric Lux?
Oh such is the life of a #4 in a two driver team.
Joe,
I’m interested to know your thoughts on Di Resta. You were rather sceptical over the reasons for his replacing Liuzzi at the beginning of the season, but he seems to have done a pretty good job so far, generally outperforming his more experienced team-mate (the latter’s more recent personal issues notwithstanding).
I’ve always thought that anyone who was able to beat Vettel in F3 in the same team over the course of a season deserves a crack of the whip. What are your thoughts on his season so far?
JP
jprestidge,
I have been very impressed by what he has done. I was sceptical but I am now convinced that he not only has talent but has also been able to translate that despite five years in DTM. I am a little wary of whether or not the team runs things in an even-handed fashion, based on what we have seen in the past, but one cannot doubt that di Resta is doing a good job. I am not sure that one can apply things that happened a long time ago to try to judge the drivers today. People develop and your arguments do not tale this into account.
Will saving tyres be the death of qualifying as we have known it? If that is the way Q3 is going to end from now on maybe they should just not bother or change the format. Very anti-climactic. Yes going out again probably wouldn’t have changed the order too much at the top but it just felt really strange and not what I was looking forward to.
Joe, I bet the answer must be somewhere within the fat rule book but still I find something quite silly though it may well be that my thinking is the silly part of it.
Well, a driver who has done several attempts in Q1 would not be permitted to race if his best lap time wasn’t within the famous 107%. On the other hand we had a driver who sat out the whole qualifing session and was allowed to start from the back of the grid. On what merit? Would a team expecting to have serious problem to get within the 107% better do to sit the qualy out with a bunch of mechanics frantically pretending they’re fixing the cars?
Sorry, I forgot to ask also a DRS-related question. Are drivers allowed to use DRS also to overtake backmarkers or not. According to the official F1 telly graphics which shows the use of KERS and DRS, Vettel didn’t use his DRS to lap Karthikeyan (an HRT) at the beginning of the final lap despite having Hamilton with activated DRS right on his tail. If it was not for the rules, then Red Bull must be a much faster car then we are to believe.
@Bojan
Yes, the leading cars are allowed to use DRS to overtake lapped cars. If any car in front of them is within a second they are allowed to use it through the zone.
Another Liuzzi supporter here. I thought Liuzzi’s dispatch from FI was not cricket, not by far. Moreover the consequences of that are simply not done yet. So i cannot come straight eye to eye and say “good choice” to anyone at FI.
But di Resta looks good, and on the up, and i’m thankful for that and hopeful for the man.
Say, for a moment, i was an ardent di Resta fan, I would be very concerned that he’s on the move up and out of FI, based on what i perceived of how Liuzzi was treated.
Plain and simple, we now got a kid from DTM giving it welly because it’s a brilliant break, and another driver still wondering if he has to put his hands over his nuts rather than his steering wheel. Meanwhile, a certain team boss is acting as if nothing happened, and that isn’t how i’d go about attracting talent in the future.
– j
Henry, thank you. This leads me to believe Hamilton wasn’t such a great threat unless Vettel’s DRS was not functioning properly.