Vettel and Red Bull Take Front Row for European Grand Prix

Sebastian Vettel got it all right in taking the pole for the European Grand Prix. He will line up next to teammate Mark Webber in a Red Bull front row sweep.

As noted in earlier posts, I am not much of a fan of the Valencia course. I tend to view it as a race where qualifying means everything. Despite being a track that would seem to favor McLaren, the Red Bull team set themselves up well for tomorrows race by dominating qualifying and taking the top two positions. Hamilton and Alonso follow in the second row.


Good Surprise

The big surprise of qualifying was Ferrari. The team had let slip it had some major updates and would be as much as .7 a second faster per lap. Well, they definitely took a major step forward. The Scuderia was outclassed by McLaren and Red Bull in the last two rounds, but looked very racy in qualifying taking fourth and fifth. The fact Alonso was one hundredth of a second behind McLaren on a track that doesn’t really fit the red car shows the progress made.

Ugly Surprise

Wow, what happened to Brawn/Mercedes. Like Ferrari, the team introduced a host of new updates the car for this race. The updates seemed to have slowed the car. Schumacher barely made it out of Q1 and neither driver made Q3. That is just ugly regardless of how you try to make it out. It is looking more and more like a lost season for the team.



McLaren also looked a bit off. I expected the team to be on par with the Red Bulls, but the final numbers don’t look great. Hamilton finished .388 back with Button driving off in the forest .6 back. I picked Vettel for the pole in my preview of the race, but expected Hamilton to be right there with him. Obviously, that didn’t happen.

Race Prediction

The race will boil down to the first lap. If Vettel or Webber takes first, we will just watch them race off into the distance. Hamilton and Alonso would be expected to bring the fight to them, but I doubt either car has the pace to do it. Both drivers sound confident, so perhaps they have some race pace they are holding back. Personally, I doubt it and will call this one as Vettel the winner with Webber breaking down for a change!

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