Saturday 13 October 2012

Renault's 200th Pole

Renault secure their 200th Pole position thanks to Mark Webber. They are now just eight behind Ferrari in the history of Formula One after Webber pipped his teammate, Sebastian Vettel to first after the German looked the favourite throughout the day. Lewis Hamilton survived a slight scare in Q1 and perhaps lucky not to have fallen at the first hurdle, but he recovered to qualify third. It was a similar story for Fernando Alonso who was also slow in Q1 but managed to turn it around and get fourth.

Felipe Massa will start sixth in between the two Lotus cars, Kimi Raikkonen out-qualified his French teammate. Nico Hulkenberg managed to get eighth for Force India whilst the two Mercedes cars line up side by side, with Nico Rosberg ahead of Michael Schumacher.

The big name to fall from Q2 was Jenson Button who could only manage 11th. This was somewhat due to Daniel Ricciardo's Toro Rosso breaking down and being parked towards the end of the lap near the end of the session. It was Peter Sauber's birthday today and he had a muted celebration with Sergio Perez starting 12th and Kamui Kobayashi 13th. Paul Di Resta will begin the race 14th in the other Force India with Pastor Maldonado in a disappointing 15th. The two Toro Rossos also line-up side by side but Ricciardo did manage to post a quicker time than Jean-Eric Vergne before breaking down and will start ahead of the Frenchman.

Narain Karthikeyan span out in Q1 and couldn't complete a time, not that he would have made it out of Q1 anyway. Bruno Senna was the one to join the usual six in the first session and will begin down in 18th place. Vitaly Petrov managed to out-qualify Heikki Kovalainen in the Caterham battle for 19th and 20th. Charles Pic also managed to beat his experienced teammate in the Marussia battle for 21st and 22nd whilst Pedro De La Rosa didn't have a lot of competition to finish 23rd.

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