German Sebastian Vettel upstaged returning Formula One legend Michael Schumacher and the other three world champions on show when he grabbed pole yesterday for today’s season-opening Bahrain Grand Prix.
The 22-year-old rising star picked up where he left off last season when he won the closing race in Abu Dhabi by showing that a 19-year age gap does make some difference as he blitzed to the best time for Red Bull in the final minutes of a closely fought session.
Schumacher, 41, making his comeback after three years, wound up in seventh place and was outpaced by not only Vettel, but also his own Mercedes teammate and compatriot Nico Rosberg, 24, who qualified fifth.
It was a better day for Schumacher’s old team Ferrari, who finished with Brazilian Felipe Massa second on the grid and new boy, two time former champion Fernando Alonso, third.
Lewis Hamilton won McLaren’s private battle of the two British world champions by taking fourth place, with teammate and defending champion Jenson Button down in eighth after a stressful session.
Vettel’s Red Bull teammate, Australian Mark Webber, was sixth and Pole Robert Kubkica ninth for Renault, with German Adrian Sutil taking 10th place for Force India.
The first mini-session, Q1, saw the two Ferraris deliver early fastest laps as the top teams calculated their tire performances carefully knowing that all of the top 10 qualifiers have to start the race on the tires used to set their best times.
The session ended with Alonso on top ahead of Vettel, Sutil and Webber, with seven men eliminated — Spaniard Jaime Alguersuari of Toro Rosso, in 18th, heading the six cars from the three new teams Virgin, Lotus and Hispania. Of these, it was German Timo Glock who did best with 19th place ahead of the two Lotuses.
Q2 saw unexpected drama and tension for two of the champions, with both defending champion Button and Schumacher scrapping in the final minutes to claw through to Q3 in the top 10.
Button was 11th, but finally made it through in 10th spot as his race engineers held their heads in the McLaren garage and Schumacher finally took ninth. This time Vettel set the pace.
This session saw a further seven cars dropping out, with Brazilian Rubens Barrichello winding up 11th for Williams and his rookie teammate German Nico Hulkenberg 12th. They went along with Italian Vitantonio Liuzzi (Force India), Spaniard Pedro de la Rosa (Sauber), Swiss Sebastien Buemi (Toro Rosso), Japanese Kamui Kobayashi (Sauber) and Russian Vitaly Petrov (Renault) filling the grid down to 17th.
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