Formula One:Germany's Sebastian Vettel, last year's Formula One championship runner-up, claimed pole position for tomorrow's season-opening Bahrain Grand Prix. Vettel, who finished the 2009 campaign by winning two of the final three races, grabbed the sixth pole of his 44-race career, leaving the returning Michael Schumacher down in seventh place.
The Red Bull Racing star put in a stunning hot lap in the closing 10-minute qualifying session at the Sakhir circuit to edge out the Ferrari pair of Felipe Massa and Fernando Alonso into second and third, with McLaren’s Lewis Hamilton fourth.
The 22-year-old Vettel was brilliant throughout all three sessions, finishing second in the opening 20 minutes, before topping the middle 15-minute stint and then coming out on top at the end.
Vettel ultimately finished with a lap of one minute 54.101 seconds, with Massa 0.141secs adrift and Alonso a further 0.4secs down.
Hamilton won his first battle of the Britons with team-mate Jenson Button at McLaren as the world champion struggled during the course of the afternoon and will start eighth directly behind seven-times champion Schumacher.
The 41-year-old, on his comeback after three and a half years in retirement, was again bettered by his Mercedes team-mate Nico Rosberg, as he was in all three practice sessions.
Vettel’s team-mate Mark Webber starts sixth, with Robert Kubica in his Renault ninth behind Button, and Force India’s Adrian Sutil a fine 10th.
In the dying moments of Q2, Button managed to scrape his way into the top 10, edging out his Brawn team-mate from last season in Rubens Barrichello, now with Williams, by 0.162secs.
Behind the veteran Brazilian will be Force India’s Vitantonio Liuzzi and the second Williams of promising German rookie Nico Hulkenberg, who was only half-a-second down on Barrichello.
The Saubers of Pedro de la Rosa and Kamui Kobayashi will start 14th and 16th, with Toro Rosso’s Sebastien Buemi splitting the Spanish and Japanese drivers.
On his debut, Renault’s Russian rookie Vitaly Petrov knows the task he now faces after seeing team-mate Kubica’s performance as he will start 17th, finishing a yawning 1.7secs behind the Pole at the end of the session.
It was no great surprise to see the three new teams occupying the bottom six positions come the conclusion to the initial 20-minute session.
And it was Virgin who were best of the newcomers thanks to Timo Glock, and that after seeing a wheel roll off his car in final practice earlier today due to
loose nut.
The German will start 19th, edging the Lotus Racing pair of Jarno Trulli and Heikki Kovalainen into 20th and 21st places, with just 0.6secs separating the trio.
Glock’s team-mate Lucas di Grassi was a further 0.2secs adrift, leaving Hispania Racing’s Bruno Senna and Karun Chandhok bringing up the rear of the now 24-strong grid.
Brazilian Senna finished nearly three seconds behind di Grassi, whilst Chandhok was a further 1.9secs further adrift, and 10.3secs seconds down on the
fastest man in the initial session, Alonso.
In retrospect, it was not a bad effort from the second Indian due to race in F1 after he failed to complete a single lap in any of the practice sessions following a range of problems with his car.
With seven drivers dropping out after Q1, the unlucky man to wind up joining the new boys was Toro Rosso’s Jaime Alguersuari, even though the young Spaniard was 2.7secs faster than Glock.