Qualifying Surprises of a Different Sort

Once again it's a grand prix weekend, with this week's action coming from China. Qualifying took place at 7 this morning, and it definitely held a few surprises which should make for an intriguing race tomorrow. This season, McLaren have been confident in all the race weekends so far - despite Lewis Hamilton's sometimes grumpy demeanour. While 2011 was Red Bull's qualifying season, this year it looks as though McLaren have the advantage, securing a front-row lock out in Australia and a third place slot for Lewis in Malaysia. However, this weekend the team have had a few hurdles, with Lewis having to take a 5-place grid drop due to a gearbox change, meaning that his second position on the grid actually translates into seventh. Jenson Button also had a somewhat disappointing session, only qualifying sixth (translating into fifth after Lewis's penalty).

With the McLarens further down, you'd expect the other two big teams to be ahead. Well, this also prompted suprise this morning. Despite Alonso's promising win in Malaysia, Ferrari this week could only manage 9th and 12th, with Alonso out-qualifying Massa once again. Whether the team can turn this around in the race is a question to be answered tomorrow. So what of the Red Bulls? Well, this was perhaps the biggest surprise of all, with Webber no higher than 7th and Vettel not making Q3 for the first time since 2009, instead only managing 11th place.

Now, you should all be aware that I'm a Red Bull girl anyway, and Vettel is without doubt my favourite driver, so I'm leading on to a slight rant here. After Q2 with Vettel out of Q3, Twitter was awash with what I can only describe as childish tweets. Some people were simply laughing at the driver's misfortune, others were making sarcastic comments, and still more were questioning Vettel's ability in F1. While I understand that we all have our own favourites and not all drivers are to all tastes, the frankly low comments I saw on Twitter were embarrassing. I know for example that I'm not the biggest fan of Lewis Hamilton (largely for the fact that his personality has shifted since he first started driving and since he won the 2008 championship - that and the earrings), however I don't ever mock him if he gets a bad result. I certainly don't question his ability in an F1 car either. I recall a comment by Martin Brundle that there are seven billion people in the world, and only 24 F1 drivers in the sport right now. Surely then we should all have respect for every one of those drivers on that grid, as they've proven their talent throughout their careers? Thus, one bad result doesn't mean that the competitor isn't a good driver, and we have to examine other aspects to the session which could contribute to a poor result (for example, Vettel running an old spec exhaust while Webber ran the newer spec).

I think the Vettel-hate on Twitter is largely to do with the success of the driver, and from reading comments (and through personal experience in my academic career) I've noticed that people generally don't like successful people and rejoice when they fall. It seems silly to question Vettel's ability as a result of one bad qualifying session. The guy's won two world championships and was absolutely dominant throughout last year. Before you utter the age old cry 'but it was the car!', I'd ask you to consider that Webber could not match Vettel's performance in the identical Red Bull, so I think that this is a point which is null and void. This year, Red Bull clearly haven't got the dominance with the car, hence the poorer results for both drivers. A similar thing happened after Brawn became Mercedes - the car which dominated 2009 just dropped away in 2010. These things happen, even if the ability of the driver stays the same.

Another case in point is the performance of Alonso. Ferrari have obviously been having issues in the past couple of years, and yet I don't see anyone questioning whether Alonso is a good driver or not. So why the target on Vettel? Like I said before, all 24 of these drivers have exceptional talent to make it this far, and to post childish comments on a social networking site is just petty to me and I'm urging fans to grow up just a little, and at least form some coherent arguments! With any luck, as the season progresses we'll be able to see an improvement for the Red Bull guys, and hopefully the petty comments will stop so we can all go back to watching races and appreciating them no matter who is driving.

So, with the top three teams suffering in China's qualifying session, who took the top slots? Well, after Hamilton's penalty we've got an all Silver Arrows front row, with the Mercedes of Nico Rosberg occupying the first slot (a career first for Rosberg) and Schumacher following close behind. This is a phenomenal achievement, and Mercedes are proving that their car has the pace in qualifying. It could be argued that the aerodynamic system on the rear wing of the car is helping a lot during qualifying (as use of DRS is pretty much unlimited during quali and practice sessions), however we've yet to see this sort of advantage during the race itself. Again, tomorrow will tell us exactly what Mercedes can do.

The third and fourth slots on the grid are also occupied by some surprising drivers. Third place went to Kamui Kobayashi, which is promising for Sauber considering their excellent achievements in Malaysia. Fourth place went to Lotus Renault's Kimi Raikkonen

Rain, Heat, and The Ice Man Melteth

For the second weekend in a row I'm having a break from university work having dedicated a few days to F1. This week's action came from Malaysia, a race known for its extremes of weather. After the spectacular race in Melbourne, Malaysia held high hopes for us race fans, to see whether the racing in 2012 would be staying exciting or whether Australia was a fluke. As it turns out, if these two races are anything to go by then we're in for one hell of a season.

In qualifying it was the McLarens who were the big winners once again, with Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button locking out the front row. The surprises started with the occupation of the third grid slot. Red Bull? No. Lotus? No. A silver Mercedes. However, this wasn't the Mercedes of Nico Rosberg, but rather Michael Schumacher; a man who many in the media have criticised since his comeback. I was delighted that Schumi managed to get this grid slot; I've always been an advocate of Schumacher's return, as is highlighted in a previous blog post of mine (as discussed on 5 Live F1 too I believe). It's nice to see that Schumacher still has the ability to drive these cars. So with the Red Bulls losing out again and the Mercedes powered cars at the front after qualifying, today's race was set to be an interesting one.

As Malaysia is another early race, I set my alarm for 7:30 (the start time of Sky's F1 coverage) after moving the clock forwards an hour due to British Summer Time. I'd thus prepared to get up that extra hour earlier - I often sacrifice my sleep for motorsport. Sadly, my phone decided that it would add an extra hour advance to my phone's clock, so I ended up getting up even earlier than planned... Something I feel I will probably pay for when at uni tomorrow. No matter, eventually the race coverage began and I can safely say that this one was a treat, and worth the sleep deprivation.

The Malaysia weather wasn't disappointing, with a shower 5 minutes before the start of the race. This brought back memories of 2009's race - yep, the one where Kimi Raikkonen abandoned his car during the red flag to wander off and have an ice cream. While rainy races are always exciting, there's a fine line between the weather making things interesting and making things dangerous. At the start of the race things weren't so bad, and so the race started as normal. However, the safety car soon came out and 9 laps in the race was stopped. For those of you who aren't so clued up on the rules of F1, when red flags are given the cars line up on the grid in race order. At this point of the race, we had a couple of surprises in the top 10: the Sauber of Sergio Perez and - please believe me when I say this - the Hispania of Narain Karthekeyan. After half an hour of halted running, the race finally resumed under the safety car, and it was from there on that things got really interesting.

Fairly soon after resuming, the track had dried sufficiently to move back on to intermediate tyres. The pit stops led to a lot of confusion on the timing screens, but when things eventually settled down we had our leaders: Fernando Alonso, Sergio Perez and Lewis Hamilton. Honestly, I knew we would have a surprising race, but this was completely unexpected! Perez's pace in the Sauber had to be a highlight of the race for me - at one point it looked as though he was going to take the race lead. No doubt Perez would have won the race had he not gone wide in the closing stages of the race.

Sadly, the races of the Mercedes cars didn't turn out as promised, with Schumacher claiming the last point and Rosberg finishing behind in 13th. To my disappointment, the Red Bulls also had a bit of a poor race, with Webber finishing fourth (ok, not so bad but considering last year's performance it could have been better) and Vettel finishing 12th after sustaining a puncture when lapping the HRT of Karthekeyan (yes, he sadly lost his 10th place). To be honest, Vettel was lucky to finish the race at all: radio messages from his engineer in the last couple of laps told him first to retire, then stay out, then retire again due to a serious problem. I can only hope that Red Bull work out where their problems are for the next race in China. Jenson Button also finished outside of the points, after again colliding with another car and having to have a front wing change. After this change, he couldn't get the intermediate tyres to work, and suffered through the remainder of the race.

There's no way I can do justice to the entire race here, you'll just have to go and watch it. It was one of the best I've seen in a while. After the chequered flag fell, we had the most surprising podium for a long time: Alonso, Perez and Hamilton (ok, the last one isn't so surprising). So, despite the speculation of the pace of the Ferrari, Alonso didn't get a bad result at all. In fact, he was probably as surprised as we were. However, I don't think anyone can argue that the driver of the day is Perez, and there are a lot of us who eagerly await to see what he can do in the future.

blogs. Until next time...