~ Red Bull Qualifying Report: Seb seals second for home race~ Sebastian Vettel will line up on the front row at his home race in Germany, after he was narrowly beaten to pole position by Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton. Mark Webber also came close to the top spot but will start third after finishing a tenth of a second behind his team-mate. As at Silverstone last weekend, the battle for pole position came down to a fight between us and Mercedes, though this time the sharp end of the fight was conducted without British Grand Prix winner Nico Rosberg. The German failed to make it into Q3 after a mistake saw him remain in the garage as the track improved rapidly and his team misjudged the cut-off. With Ferrari’s Felipe Massa and Fernando Alonso opting to run on medium tyres for their final laps in Q3, to qualify in seventh and eighth places respectively, and with McLaren’s Jenson Button and Sauber’s Nico Hulkenberg not setting times, the field was left to Seb, Mark, the remaining Mercedes of Lewis Hamilton, the Lotus cars of Kimi Raikkonen and Romain Grosjean and Toro Rosso’s Daniel Ricciardo. Ricciardo quickly slotted into his second sixth place in a row, while ahead, Grosjean and Raikkonen tussled over the back of row two. P4 eventually went to the Finn. Pole position, then, was a straight fight between Mark, Seb and Lewis. Sebastian laid down the marker with a lap of 1:29.501. Behind him Mark was setting purple sector times and looked briefly like claiming his first pole position of the year. A slower final sector halted his charge, though, and his time of 1:29.608 saw him take third. Hamilton was just beginning his final flying lap and eventually crossed the line in 1:29.398 to take his second career German GP pole, the last coming in 2008 at Hockenheim. Afterwards, Sebastian admitted he had tried everything possible to take what would have been his own second career pole at a German GP, his last front-of-grid start being in 2010. “Congratulations to Lewis on the pole,” said Sebastian. “It was very tight today, I tried everything. The car felt fine; I was struggling a little bit this afternoon in the first sector, I was losing time there and then trying to catch up. Unfortunately it wasn’t enough, but it looks like we are a bit closer to the Mercedes here than we were in Silverstone, so I think we made some progress and can have confidence for tomorrow. “We had a good run yesterday looking at the race, so I think we have done our homework,” he added. “We have put the car on the first row; it wasn’t quite enough for pole position, but we should have a good race from there tomorrow.” After finishing just a tenth behind Seb, Mark professed himself pleased with the result. “I was actually happy with third position today, as it was very sensitive out there,” he said. “We lost a little bit in the first sector and struggled to find the rhythm that we had in P3, but we know there was a shift in track temp and it pulled everyone together a bit, at least for the short runs. With the long runs, we’re happy with the car, so we’re in a good position to put pressure on for the race victory tomorrow.” Team Principal Christian Horner was also satisfied with the outcome. “To start second and third on the gird for the German GP is obviously a very strong team performance,” he said. “It was very tight for the pole position and in the end Lewis managed to produce a lap one tenth quicker than we could manage, but nonetheless it was a solid team effort today and Sebastian did his best in front of his home crowd with Mark just behind in third. Tomorrow’s race will be very interesting with some different strategies going on and our focus will be to try and capitalise on our grid positions.”
Posted on: Sun, 07 Jul 2013 06:14:08 +0000
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