Motor Sport: Sebastian Vettel today breathed a sigh of relief after maintaining Red Bull Racing's remarkable run of pole positions. After equalling a Formula One record last year with 15 in 19 races, the team — with Vettel at the wheel — have now taken the first two of this season.
However, they have been in remarkably different circumstances given pole in Australia a fortnight ago was a walk in the park, finishing nearly 0.8secs clear of Hamilton. On this occasion it was last-gasp stuff as Vettel initially crossed the line in setting off on his final hot lap with just four seconds to spare.
With his three main rivals ahead of him in team-mate Mark Webber and the McLaren duo of Hamilton and Jenson Button, Vettel knew it was all in his hands.
Neither Webber, who finished third, nor Button, who wound up fourth, could initially better Hamilton’s early time of one minute 35 seconds dead, before the Briton topped his effort by a fraction with a 1:34.974.
With the clock long having counted down towards zero, it left Vettel as the last man on track, and he did not disappoint as he secured the team’s 17th pole from the last 21 races by 0.104secs.
It was also the 17th pole of his career, moving him up to equal 10th on the all-time Formula One list alongside Sir Jackie Stewart.
“That was definitely closer, so I’m very happy,” said Vettel. “The gap is quite a lot smaller than it was in Australia, so it goes to show how quickly things can change at the next race.
But when you go to qualifying it’s ‘pull your trousers down and let’s see what you’ve got’.”
It was a colourful analogy, but one typical of Vettel who added: “It has been quite a challenging weekend until qualifying because I couldn’t get into a rhythm, not yesterday nor this morning. But we knew we had it in the car so the main thing was to keep on believing in it, and in qualifying it worked out straightaway.”
The difference, it would appear, is that Red Bull again had KERS on the car, the power-boost system they opted not to use in Australia due to a minor technical glitch.
“Big compliments to the guys, in particular those who have worked on KERS because we had lots of criticism after the last race for not running it,” added Vettel. “It’s something we were not proud of, but we solved most of the problems, and if we hadn’t have had it neither of us would have been here, so it’s a great achievement.”
For a few moments Hamilton appeared poised to lead away the field for the first time since Canada last year, only to be denied at the death and extend his pole-less run to 13 races. Despite that, Hamilton said: “I don’t think we can be disappointed. We’ve done a fantastic job to even be up there with the Red Bulls.
“I feel very proud of the effort the guys have put in, especially into getting some new parts for this weekend, and just constantly moving forward. Of course, I would have loved to have put the car on P1. These guys still have a slight edge, but we’ve closed the gap a little bit it seems here.”
Behind the leading quartet, Ferrari’s Fernando Alonso starts fifth, with Nick Heidfeld in his Renault sixth, a superb improvement from his 18th in Australia. Felipe Massa lines up seventh in his Ferrari, followed by the second Renault of Vitaly Petrov, Nico Rosberg in his Mercedes and Sauber’s Kamui Kobayashi, with Michael Schumacher 11th.
Scotland’s Paul di Resta starts 14th in his Force India, just over 0.2secs and three places ahead of team-mate Adrian Sutil. Unlike in Australia when we only had a 22-car field as the Hispania Racing duo failed to qualify after finishing outside the 107% time, on this occasion Vitantonio Liuzzi and Narain Karthikeyan will both race.