Saturday 29 October 2011

India Welcomes Formula One

Despite the silverware already being dished out, India came out in force to watch the first ever F1 qualifying session at the Buddh International Circuit. To celebrate this, Hispania allowed Indian driver Karthikeyan to take the wheel ahead of Liuzzi in front of his home crowd.

But a new venue didn't produce new results as Vettel still managed to qualify on Pole. Hamilton qualified second but has been moved down to fifth after receiving a three place grid penalty for not showing caution around the Marshalls during practice. This allows Webber, Alonso and Button to start second, third and fourth respectively. Massa took too much of a kerb in the final seconds of Q3 and snapped his suspension, causing the Ferrari to end up in the barriers but the Brazilian still qualified in sixth. Rosberg took his usual spot behind the big three ahead of Sutil in eighth. Both Toro Rossos managed to progress into Q3 and Buemi will start ahead of Alguersuari.

Vettel was also the quickest in Q2 while the fastest man in Q1, Vitaly Petrov, could only manage to qualify in eleventh. But he received a five place grid penalty for causing a crash in the Korean GP and will subsequently start sixteenth. This allows Schumacher to start in eleventh, Di Resta twelfth, Maldonado thirteenth, Senna fourteenth and Barrichello fifteenth. Perez qualified seventeenth but he will start in twentieth due to a three place grid penalty for not acknowledging yellow flag conditions. This means the big name to fall from Q1, Kobayashi, will now start in seventeenth place.

The penalty also pushes Kovalainen and Trulli up to eighteenth and nineteenth place. Timo Glock suffered a gearbox failure and was unable to set a time in qualifying, therefore starting twenty-fourth tomorrow. Virgin's session got worse with D'Ambrosio failing to out-qualify either of the two Hispania cars and lines up alongside his team mate. Ricciardo out-qualified his new temporary team-mate in twenty-first but Karthikeyan will be in the Australian's mirrors.

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