Nico Rosberg achieved his fifth career pole position in Formula 1 by edging out Lewis Hamilton at the Bahrain International Circuit.
Throughout the weekend, Lewis Hamilton had set the pace in every session leading into qualifying. In fact, the Mercedes driver was the favourite for pole position, but after being outpaced by Rosberg on their first runs in Q3, he tried to make amends but ran wide on his final run.
Rosberg also aborted his final run too after been informed Hamilton made a mistake, earning the top spot and another on-two for the Silver Arrows.
Daniel Ricciardo was one of the few drivers to improve on his second run in Q3, jumping to third. However, the Red Bull driver will serve a ten-place grid penalty after an unsafe release in last weekend’s Malaysian Grand Prix.
This relegated Valtteri Bottas to third, the Finn proving that the Williams team’s pace during pre-season testing here was no fluke with a place on the second row.
Force India driver Sergio Perez has been strong all weekend and was next quickest, only a tenth slower than Bottas.
He shaded Kimi Raikkonen, who had only one run in Q3 because The Iceman had only one set of fresh Pirellis remaining, by 22 thousandths of a second.
The McLaren duo of Jenson Button and Kevin Magnussen ended up seventh and eighth, split by the Williams of Felipe Massa, with both making late improvements as they also had only one set of new softs for the session.
As for Fernando Alonso, the Ferrari driver was the slowest in Q3 after a disappointing final lap, ending up six tenths adrift from team-mate Raikkonen.
And yet the biggest shock was when the previous Bahrain Grand Prix winner was knocked out in Q2. The defending world champion Sebastian Vettel was unable to make into the top ten shoot out for the second time in three races.
Red Bull Racing opted to complete just one run in Q2 and Vettel complained about downshift problems after missing the cut by six-hundredths of a second.
Nico Hulkenberg, who has struggled to match Force India team-mate Perez all weekend, also failed to hook up a good enough lap to make Q3 after running wide onto the kerb at Turn 11, ending up P12 ahead of the Toro Rossos of Daniil Kvyat and Jean-Eric Vergne.
Sauber’s Esteban Gutierrez shaded Lotus driver Romain Grosjean for P15 place by just 17 thousandths of a second.
This was another disappointing qualifying session for Lotus. With Pastor Maldonado dropping out in Q1 with P17, beaten by his team-mate by nine thousandths of a second.
Grosjean is under investigation from the race stewards after impeding Adrian Sutil’s Sauber during qualifying.
Sutil was also knocked out in Q1, while Caterham continued its recent upward curve in terms of performance, with Kamui Kobayashi P19, lapping within a quarter of a second, and Marcus Ericsson in P21.
Jules Bianchi split the two Caterhams, with Max Chilton taking his usual grid spot, in last place.
Qualifying positions, Bahrain Grand Prix:
1. Nico Rosberg Mercedes 1m33.185s
2. Lewis Hamilton Mercedes 1m33.464s
3. Valtteri Bottas Williams-Mercedes 1m34.247s
4. Sergio Perez Force India-Mercedes 1m34.346s
5. Kimi Raikkonen Ferrari 1m34.368s
6. Jenson Button McLaren-Mercedes 1m34.387s
7. Felipe Massa Williams-Mercedes 1m34.511s
8. Kevin Magnussen McLaren-Mercedes 1m34.712s
9. Fernando Alonso Ferrari 1m34.992s
10. Sebastian Vettel Red Bull-Renault 1m34.985s
11. Nico Hulkenberg Force India-Mercedes 1m35.116s
12. Daniil Kvyat Toro Rosso-Renault 1m35.145s
13. Daniel Ricciardo Red Bull-Renault 1m34.051s*
14. Jean-Eric Vergne Toro Rosso-Renault 1m35.286s
15. Esteban Gutierrez Sauber-Ferrari 1m35.891s
16. Romain Grosjean Lotus-Renault 1m35.908s
17. Pastor Maldonado Lotus-Renault 1m36.663s
18. Adrian Sutil Sauber-Ferrari 1m36.840s
19. Kamui Kobayashi Caterham-Renault 1m37.085s
20. Jules Bianchi Marussia-Ferrari 1m37.310s
21. Marcus Ericsson Caterham-Renault 1m37.875s
22. Max Chilton Marussia-Ferrari 1m37.913s
*Ten-place grid penalty for unsafe release in the pits
Red Bull’s Daniel Ricciardo will be racing in an aggressive mood following his ten-place grid penalty in last weekend’s Malaysian Grand Prix. Autosport.com has the news story.
Daniel Ricciardo believes he will need to be aggressive in tomorrow’s Bahrain Grand Prix in order to recover from his grid penalty that will drop him down the order.
The Red Bull driver qualified in third behind the dominant Mercedes cars, but will drop 10 places on the grid after being hit with a penalty for his unsafe release during last weekend’s Malaysian Grand Prix.
While Ricciardo admits the priority is to score his first points of the season following a retirement at Sepang and disqualification in Australia, he thinks there is no need to be conservative tomorrow.
“I would love to charge through and have a podium, but realistically we have to get some points to start,” said the Australian.
“My season has been going well but I don’t have any points to show for it so far.
“But in saying that, I don’t think we need to be conservative, we need to push, we are out of position, we’ll do what we can.
“If there is an opportunity to move forward I will do what I can and hopefully take away some points.
“At the moment it is pretty close between a two or three stops, maybe there is some room for us to try something.”
Ricciardo outqualified team-mate Sebastian Vettel for the second time in three races, and was the only man capable of lapping within a second of Mercedes drivers Nico Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton.
“I’m really pleased with the performance, it was the best anyone else could do with the two guys alongside me,” he added.
“We still have some ground to make on them but I am really pleased with qualifying tonight.”
Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen is now more comfortable with the car, especially the brake-by-wire. Autosport.com has the details.
Kimi Raikkonen believes that the changes Ferrari has made to its 2014 Formula 1 challenger have helped him feel more comfortable on track.
The Finn will start Sunday’s Bahrain Grand Prix from fifth place on the grid, having qualified sixth with Red Bull’s Daniel Ricciardo taking a 10-place grid penalty.
Raikkonen has struggled to feel at home with the Ferrari F14 T this season, but after outqualifying team-mate Fernando Alonso for the first time this season, he said he was happier in the cockpit.
“The feeling is a bit better with the car,” Raikkonen told reporters in the Sakhir paddock.
“I think the parts I wanted have definitely helped.
“In qualifying it felt more like we expected and wanted. It’s definitely the right direction.
“We’re still not where we want to be but we know what we’re doing. It will just take time to get where we want.”
The 2007 world champion said there is no specific area that needs improvement on the Ferrari, as the team needs to make gains in every department.
“We need to go forward with all areas of the car,” he added. “Obviously we need more.
“Understanding on engines and electronics to improve those small things that make a lot of improvement.
“We improved a lot of things in the first three races, all areas. [And] I improved a little with the front end.”
Raikkonen said that he has not really suffered many problems with the new brake-by-wire system in the last two race weekends, after it proved troublesome earlier in the year.
“[Brake-by-wire] wasn’t really a problem,” he said. “We had some issues in testing, there were some odd things in Australia.
“It’s all really to do with front end, and if you have a good feeling with the brake it gets easier. We’ve improved in that area.”
As for Sebastian Vettel, the team admitted it didn’t have any time to fix the four-time world champion’s problems. Autosport.com has the story.
Sebastian Vettel says his Red Bull Formula 1 team ran out of time to fix the issue that hampered his running during qualifying for the Bahrain Grand Prix.
The world champion was knocked out in Q2 for the second time this season and qualified down in 11th position, although he will start from 10th following his team-mate’s Daniel Ricciardo’s grid penalty.
Vettel suffered from a problem with his downshifting during his flying lap in Q2, an issue that appeared after the first qualifying segment and that Red Bull was unable to solve in time.
The world champion believes he would have made it into Q3 without the problem.
“We had some issues with the shift. Between Q1 and Q2 something went wrong and we couldn’t fix it in time, so I had to do the lap compromised,” said Vettel.
“How much is difficult to measure, but surely it was no help. The car behaviour was not the way I expected or the way I wanted.
“I’m not a fan of blaming something in particular, [but] without it probably I would have made it to Q3. It was not the session we wanted to have.”
The German also explained that a downshift problem on a 2014 F1 car has other ramifications that affect its handling.
“There’s a lot of stuff going on this year,” he said. “Obviously when you hit the brakes you are not just hitting the brakes.
“When you hit the brakes you are also charging the car, so you try to get as much energy as you can under braking.
“The total amount is limited by the FIA, but how it all works in combination when you hit the brakes is up to your tuning.
“And in combination with the downshift it can upset the whole thing a little bit.
“It can be a bit complicated. We have worked on this quite a lot.
“We are not yet where we want to be so I’m not yet happy with the car getting to the apex. It’s a lot of stuff ahead of us.”
Vettel admitted the nature of the Sakhir circuit was always going to prove more challenging for Red Bull.
“We knew from testing that it’s a difficult track for us,” he said. “We are down on power.
“Around here you need some power. That’s how it is. I think nonetheless we have a good chance to put the car in a fairly good place in the points.”
Adrian Sutil will start from the back of the Bahrain Grand Prix grid after being hit with a penalty for impeding Romain Grosjean during Formula 1 qualifying.
Lotus driver Grosjean was coming up to the Sauber when Sutil moved to the right and forced the Frenchman to brake in order to avoid contact.
Race stewards said Sutil had “forced car 8 off the track between turns 13 and 14 in an unsafe manner” and imposed a five-place grid penalty.
Sutil, who had qualified in 18th position, will now start from the back of the grid.
The Sauber driver was also awarded two penalty points for the incident.
The incident happened during Grosjean’s out-lap and it did not affect the Frenchman’s qualifying performance.
“I was trying to get a clean lap and it was just a qualifying scenario. It probably looked quite close on television but it wasn’t,” said Grosjean.
When asked if Sutil had apologised, he said: “That’s OK, it’s qualifying.”
Source: Autosport.com