Webber Beats Vettel to Spain Pole at BetLM

Webber Beats Vettel to Spain Pole

By Andrew Ben­son
BBC Sport at the Cir­cuit de Catalunya

Mark Web­ber beat his Red Bull team-mate Sebas­t­ian Vet­tel for the first time this sea­son to grab pole posi­tion for the Span­ish Grand Prix.

The Aus­tralian headed the Ger­man, who was on pole for all the season’s first four races, by 0.2 sec­onds as the Red Bulls were in a league of their own.

The McLarens of Lewis Hamil­ton and Jen­son But­ton were third and fifth, split by Ferrari’s Fer­nando Alonso.

Renault’s Vitaly Petrov was sixth, ahead of Mercedes’s Nico Rosberg.

Webber’s first pole since the Bel­gian Grand Prix last August is an impor­tant land­mark after being dom­i­nated by his team-mate so far this season.

BBC F1 com­men­ta­tor Mar­tin Brun­dle said: “Web­ber psy­cho­log­i­cally scores a direct hit on Sebas­t­ian Vet­tel. It should be a fas­ci­nat­ing duel between the Red Bull dri­vers. Can Lewis Hamil­ton, like last year, hang on and give them a hard time?”

Web­ber is already 38 points behind Vet­tel in the cham­pi­onship, so a win on a track at which he dom­i­nated in 2010 would be an impor­tant boost for his already dwin­dling title hopes.

Some of the shine was taken off his per­for­mance by the knowl­edge that Vet­tel was not able to use his Kers power-boost sys­tem in the sec­ond and final parts of qual­i­fy­ing, depriv­ing him of poten­tially 0.2secs a lap.

But Web­ber prob­a­bly would have been on pole any­way and Vet­tel gra­ciously refused to blame his Kers prob­lems for fail­ing to take his fifth con­sec­u­tive pole this season.

“It’s not right to say Mark is on pole because I didn’t have Kers,” he said. “Mark did a bet­ter job today.

“I’m not con­cerned, we are work­ing hard on the Kers, and I think we will be on top of it in the race.”

Web­ber added: “It was a good ses­sion. We thought he had an advan­tage and that we would prob­a­bly bat­tle for pole, not to under­es­ti­mate the other guys. I was obvi­ously pray­ing my num­ber went to num­ber one on the gantry when I crossed the line and it did. Today was my day.”

Web­ber was nearly a sec­ond faster than Hamil­ton, but the Eng­lish­man will have hopes of push­ing the Red Bulls in the race, as he has been able to do sev­eral times this season.

“I’m happy with the result,” Hamilton said.

“I’m push­ing like crazy, as you can tell. I made some changes going into qual­i­fy­ing, and it was the wrong choice. It’s good to be in P3, but it was mas­sively close to the guys behind, and nowhere near as fast as the guys in front.

“We’re not as quick as the Red Bulls, but nonethe­less we’ll push as hard as we can. I’m start­ing on the clean side, and the aim is to get to P1 in turn one!”

Per­haps the lap of the ses­sion was from Alonso. Fer­rari had looked to be strug­gling for pace through­out prac­tice and the first two parts of qualifying.

He was 0.8secs slower than the McLarens in the sec­ond ses­sion but Alonso pulled some pace from some­where in the final ses­sion and failed to snatch third from Hamil­ton by only a few thou­sandths of a second.

He was helped by Hamil­ton lock­ing a wheel on his qual­i­fy­ing lap. Nev­er­the­less, Alonso’s race engi­neer Andrea Stella said over the radio: “That was a spe­cial lap.” A thrilled Alonso, who broke a run of qual­i­fy­ing fifth for every race this sea­son, whooped in response.

After­wards, the Spaniard said: “I did a per­fect lap. I reckon that if I tried to repeat it 20 times I could not do bet­ter. When you do a lap like that it’s hard to put into words what one feels: always being on the limit in every cor­ner is a spe­cial feeling.”

Kers has proved some­thing of an Achilles’ heel for Red Bull this sea­son — only at the Turk­ish Grand Prix have the team had a com­pletely trouble-free weekend.

If Red Bull can run at their own pace — which appears vastly supe­rior to their rivals — that should not be a problem.

Their main con­cern will be get­ting beaten down to the first cor­ner of the race by Hamil­ton or Alonso, which could turn the grand prix on its head.

That pos­si­bil­ity is height­ened by Vet­tel start­ing on the dirty side of the grid, where there is less grip than on the racing line.

But­ton said he was pleased with his qualifying lap.

“I’m three hun­dredths [of a sec­ond] off third, and the pos­i­tive thing is I’m start­ing from the clean side of the grid. It’s dif­fi­cult to pre­dict what will hap­pen, but tyre-wise in par­tic­u­lar I think we’re in pretty good shape.”

There were impres­sive per­for­mances from Petrov and, par­tic­u­larly, Williams’s Pas­tor Mal­don­ado, who shrugged off a dif­fi­cult start to his grand prix career by get­ting into the top 10 qual­i­fy­ing shoot-out for the first time and make ninth spot on the grid, behind Ferrari’s Felipe Massa.

Rosberg’s team-mate Michael Schu­macher qual­i­fied 10th after opt­ing not to use the faster soft tyres in final qual­i­fy­ing so he has an extra new set for the race, a poten­tial advantage.

The vet­eran was 0.1secs slower than Ros­berg in the sec­ond part of qualifying.

Schu­macher explained: “We had a prob­lem with Kers and we couldn’t go out for another qual­i­fy­ing lap so we pre­ferred to save the tyres for tomorrow.

“We went for soft tyres in Q1. I’m pretty sure Kers will work tomor­row and DRS so hope­fully there will be some over­tak­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties. We’ll have some fun.”

Force India dri­vers Paul di Resta and Adrian Sutil did not use soft tyres in qual­i­fy­ing and were slow­est in the sec­ond ses­sion, lin­ing up 16th and 17th.

BBC F1 co-commentator David Coulthard said: “That’s clearly sac­ri­fic­ing grid posi­tion so they can use more soft tyres in the race. A very inter­est­ing tactic.”

Their deci­sion meant Lotus dri­ver Heikki Kovalainen was able to qual­ify ahead of them in 15th place, the team’s best qual­i­fy­ing posi­tion in the dry since they entered F1 at the begin­ning of last year.

Kovalainen said: “We wanted to go for the qual­i­fy­ing time and max­imise our per­for­mance. Every­body on the pit wall agreed, and I think it was the right choice.”

BBC F1 chief ana­lyst Eddie Jor­dan said he felt that was play­ing “too short a game”, to which Kovalainen responded: “That’s the bor­ing approach.”

Two big names missed the cut in the first part of qualifying.

One was Renault’s Nick Hei­d­feld, whose mechan­ics were not able to repair his car in time after a huge fire in morn­ing practice.

“The fire was the biggest one I’ve had in F1,” said Hei­d­feld. “I still hope for a good race and with fresh tyres you can still move for­ward and fight.”

More sur­pris­ing was the fail­ure of Williams dri­ver Rubens Bar­richello, who was afflicted by a gear­box prob­lem and was unable to use the soft tyres he needed to be quick enough to make the cut.

“We had a gear­box prob­lem. The car was not doing very well when I was run­ning and when I came back they said I couldn’t go out again.

“It’s very frus­trat­ing because the car is not fast and it is not run­ning often either, so it’s a bit of a mess right now.”

Related Posts:

• But­ton Hopes to Match Red Bulls
• But­ton Hopes to Match Red Bulls
• Vet­tel Seals Dra­matic Monaco Win
• Dom­i­nant Vet­tel Takes Turkey Pole
• Badr Hari Eas­ily Beats Over­matched Gre­gory Tony

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