Vettel Takes Pole at Silverstone in British Grand Prix

Sebastian Vettel has taken pole at the revised Silverstone track for the British Grand Prix. Mark Webber completes the front row in a Red Bull dominated qualifying.

We are past the half way mark of the season and things are starting to get serious now. The teams are starting to put forth their best advancements and we are seeing the ugly backroom politics start to appear in public. This is particularly true at Red Bull.


Red Bull Pulls Rank

Chris Horner has claimed Red Bull supports its drivers equally. The lie has been exposed yet again in England. The team is laughably biased towards Sebastian Vettel as it showed in qualifying. The first instance came when Vettel had a front wing failure on his car at the end of morning practice. The team didn’t have an extra version of the new wing, so it removed the wing from Webber’s car and put it on Vettel’s!

Webber did what any good driver would do – he took out his frustration on the track. He did this by setting the pace in Q2. Apparently not wanting to see Seb trumped for the pole, Red Bull then did something very odd. It sent Webber out a smidge late so he could only get one lap in on the track, not two! The soft tires have been shown consistently to perform the best on the second lap, so the solemn expression of Webber at the qualifying interview session was telling.

McLaren Disaster

McLaren has been given much credit for its comeback in both the constructor and driver championships. As mentioned in previous articles, the last three tracks were very favorable to the car so the results were no surprise. The McLaren, however, is very poor in high speed back and forth turns like we see at Silverstone and most of the remaining tracks. The results showed today with Hamilton qualifying fourth in what he described as his best lap ever and Button down in the teens. The weekend has been and will be an unmitigated disaster for the team. Look for Button to edge into the points and Hamilton to finish in the 4-6 range. So much for McLaren.

Surprise Team

Ferrari continues to come back from the dead. A complete disaster in Turkey, the team appears to have come all the way back to being the second fastest car on the track. Fernando Alonso has been sublime in his driving. Although he has only one lucky win, one needs only look at the performance of Massa to see the car is lacking.



Race Winner Prediction

The British Grand Prix is going to be a cakewalk for Red Bull. They are a staggering .75 seconds faster than any car in qualifying. While the Ferrari seems to have a more consistent race pace than the Red Bull, there is no chance Alonso can challenge the front row boys. The only chance for another car winning the race will be if the Red Bulls fail or the two drivers take each other out. I doubt that will happen. With Red Bull clearly favoring Sebastian Vettel, I’ll predict he wins in a comfortable 1-2 with Webber followed by Alonso, Kubica and Hamilton. I’ll go out on a limb and predict HRT will be last as well!

Here are the qualifying results:

1. Sebastian Vettel (Germany) RedBull - Renault
2. Mark Webber (Australia) RedBull - Renault
3. Fernando Alonso (Spain) Ferrari
4. Lewis Hamilton (Britain) McLaren
5. Nico Rosberg (Germany) Mercedes
6. Robert Kubica (Poland) Renault
7. Felipe Massa (Brazil) Ferrari
8. Rubens Barrichello (Brazil) Williams - Cosworth
9. Pedro de la Rosa (Spain) BMW Sauber - Ferrari
10. Michael Schumacher (Germany) Mercedes
11. Adrian Sutil (Germany) Force India - Mercedes
12. Kamui Kobayashi (Japan) BMW Sauber - Ferrari
13. Nico Huelkenberg (Germany) Williams - Cosworth
14. Jenson Button (Britain) McLaren
15. Vitaly Petrov (Russia) Renault
16. Sebastien Buemi (Switzerland) Toro Rosso - Ferrari
17. Jaime Alguersuari (Spain) Toro Rosso - Ferrari
18. Heikki Kovalainen (Finland) Lotus - Cosworth
19. Timo Glock (Germany) Virgin - Cosworth
20. Vitantonio Liuzzi (Italy) Force India - Mercedes (relegated five places after impeding another driver)
21. Jarno Trulli (Italy) Lotus - Cosworth
22. Lucas Di Grassi (Brazil) Virgin - Cosworth
23. Karun Chandhok (India) HRT - Cosworth
24. Sakon Yamamoto (Japan) HRT - Cosworth

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