Vettel Wins 2010 Formula One Bahrain Grand Prix Pole

Red Bull Drive Sebastian Vettel captured the pole for the Formula 1 Gulf Air Bahrain Grand Prix.

Red Bull's Sebastian Vettel drives ahead of McLaren Mercedes' Lewis Hamilton at the Bahrain International Circuit during the qualifying session of the Bahrain Formula One Grand Prix. Khaled Desouki/AFP/Getty Images

Red Bull Drive Sebastian Vettel captured the pole for tomorrow’s Formula 1 Gulf Air Bahrain Grand Prix, with a time of 1:54.101, more than a tenth of a second ahead of second place Felipe Massa’s Ferrari at 1:54.242.

Fernando Alonso put his Ferrari third on the grid, more than three-tenths behind his teammate.

Vettel said after qualifying that he was surprised to be on the pole, particularly since the Red Bull cars had been having troubles in practice.

“Yesterday was a very tough day for us; not as much running as we were hoping for. Another long night, especially for the mechanics—not a lot of sleep, some tired faces but everyone still was keen to push this morning.

“I knew we had a great car. This morning qualifying went pretty smoothly. I am very, very happy to be on pole. To be on top is definitely a very nice feeling.”

This was Vettel’s sixth career pole. Massa and Alonso have each won the Bahrain Grand Prix twice, Alonso in 2005 and 2006, Massa in 2007 and 2008.

Half a second back, in fourth, came Lewis Hamilton’s McLaren at 1:55.217, barely ahead of Nico Rosberg ‘s Mercedes at 1:55.427.

Michael Schumacher in the other Mercedes qualified seventh, 1.4 seconds of the pace.

In 2009, .5 seconds often covered the top seven or ten drivers. Probably the wide span of times in 2010 indicates teams’ different reactions to the many new rules facing them in qualifying this season.

New Rules, New Strategies

Cars qualify with just enough fuel on board to complete a handful of laps, but have to start the race with a full load of fuel, which weighs over 300 pounds, or one-quarter of the weight of the empty car.

The suspension has to be set up to work well with a full load of fuel, and with a lightening fuel load, as well as working well enough to qualify with almost no fuel. This puts a huge stress on engineers who have to figure out how to make the car perform over this wide range of conditions.

To add to the complication, aerodynamic performance changes dramatically as the ride height changes. Cars that handle well with full tanks might be low on downforce later in the race.

Team managers have to decide: do they run the car slowly in the opening laps, set the car up to work best with a light fuel load, and hope to make up track position late in the race, or set up the car to work well fully loaded and hope to get far enough in front to be able to hold onto track position late in the race?

Tire wear is also a huge issue, because running with a full load of fuel will wear the tires quickly so that later in the race, when the car is lighter and more responsive, its tires might be worn out. Teams will need to make at least one tire stop. Should they run hard early and then nurse their tires for most of the race, or try to save the tires for as long as possible and finish with a mad dash?

Of course, a yellow flag late in the race could destroy all that strategy, and cars which gambled wrong could find themselves facing opponents who had both fresh tires and track position.

Brake wear will also be an issue. With the cars starting heavy, brakes will take a beating through the first half of the race. Drivers will need to save some brakes for late in the race, without sacrificing too much performance—and track position—early on.

New Teams Knocked Out Early

In each session, teams waited until the last minutes to send out their cars, waiting to see what tires choices their opponents made.

With all this to be calculated, it was no surprise that no one was eager to take the track for the first round of knock-out qualifying for the Bahrain Grand Prix.

All of the new teams were eliminated in Q1. Most were eight to ten seconds off the pace.

Jaime Alguersuari of Toro Rosso, Timo Glock and Lucas di Grassi of Virgin, Heikki Kovalainen and Jarno Trulli of Lotus F1, and Bruno Senna and Karun Chandhok of HRT F1 were knocked out in Q1.

At the end of Q2 everyone waited to see what everyone else was going to do ten or twelve cars pulled on to the track simultaneously with just enough time left for a single lap Jenson Button barely made it at the end of the session.

Rubens Barrichello and Nico Hulkenberg of Williams, Vitantonio Liuzzi of Force India, Pedro de la Rosa and Kamui Kobayashi of BMW Sauber, Sebastien Buemi of Toro Rosso and Vitaly Petrov of Renault failed to advance to Q3

In the final qualifying with cars on race tires, everyone again waited for the final minutes, watching to see who chose soft tires for a good qualifying lap and who chose hard tires for a longer first stint.

Vettel, Massa and Hamilton will be starting on the Supersoft tires on Sunday.

2010 Formula 1 Gulf Air Bahrain Grand Prix Qualifying
	No	Driver	Team	Q1	Q2	Q3	Laps
1	5	Sebastian Vettel	RBR-Renault	1:55.029	1:53.883	1:54.101	14
2	7	Felipe Massa	Ferrari	1:55.313	1:54.331	1:54.242	16
3	8	Fernando Alonso	Ferrari	1:54.612	1:54.172	1:54.608	20
4	2	Lewis Hamilton	McLaren-Mercedes	1:55.341	1:54.707	1:55.217	19
5	4	Nico Rosberg	Mercedes Benz GP	1:55.463	1:54.682	1:55.241	13
6	6	Mark Webber	RBR-Renault	1:55.298	1:54.318	1:55.284	13
7	3	Michael Schumacher	Mercedes Benz GP	1:55.593	1:55.105	1:55.524	15
8	1	Jenson Button	McLaren-Mercedes	1:55.715	1:55.168	1:55.672	17
9	11	Robert Kubica	Renault	1:55.511	1:54.963	1:55.885	17
10	14	Adrian Sutil	Force India-Mercedes	1:55.213	1:54.996	1:56.309	16
11	9	Rubens Barrichello	Williams-Cosworth	1:55.969	1:55.330		12
12	15	Vitantonio Liuzzi	Force India-Mercedes	1:55.628	1:55.653		13
13	10	Nico Hulkenberg	Williams-Cosworth	1:56.375	1:55.857		14
14	22	Pedro de la Rosa	BMW Sauber-Ferrari	1:56.428	1:56.237		13
15	16	Sebastien Buemi	STR-Ferrari	1:56.189	1:56.265		14
16	23	Kamui Kobayashi	BMW Sauber-Ferrari	1:56.541	1:56.270		13
17	12	Vitaly Petrov	Renault	1:56.167	1:56.619		14
18	17	Jaime Alguersuari	STR-Ferrari	1:57.071			6
19	24	Timo Glock	Virgin-Cosworth	1:59.728			7
20	18	Jarno Trulli	Lotus-Cosworth	1:59.852			6
21	19	Heikki Kovalainen	Lotus-Cosworth	2:00.313			7
22	25	Lucas di Grassi	Virgin-Cosworth	2:00.587			7
23	21	Bruno Senna	HRT-Cosworth	2:03.240			6
24	20	Karun Chandhok	HRT-Cosworth	2:04.904			7