Surprise, surprise, surprise, Nico Hulkenberg gets Williams it’s first pole in over 5 years. His team mate Rubens Barrichello qualifies a modestly surprising 6th too. The drivers they displaced from the usual suspects were Button and Rosberg. Sutil and Buemi are staring with 5 place grid penalties, both for Turn 3 collisions at Yeongam. Buemi piled into Glock on Lap 31, Sutil collected Kobayashi on Lap 47. These are reflected in the pretty tables below.
The Telegraph article I cited does a pretty good job of summarizing the horse race, my McLaren boys need some timely DNFs, but, as I mentioned yesterday, Interlagos is a track that can provide them. Alonso is running a used engine (of course there’s Webber and Vettel too).
Tactically it’s important to remember that while it rained yesterday it’s expected to be dry today. This means a couple of things, first of all it means the track won’t be ‘rubbered in’ so it won’t particularly sticky at the start of the race.
The second thing is tire strategy. Since it dried out at the end of Qualifying all (or mostly all) of the top 10 Qualifiers were running on Softs and they’ll have to start the race on them. The fly in the ointment is that we saw in Friday practice that the Softs are only lasting a Lap or two, especially under heavy fuel and an abrasive track which are exactly the conditions we will have at the start of the race.
So, I would expect early pit stops from them.
But wait, it gets better! Qualifiers 11 – 24 are always allowed to choose the tires they start on and particularly in this case because they parked them with Intermediate wets which you’re allowed to change for race conditions (they don’t even last as long as the Softs when it’s dry and were noticably deteriorating at the end of Q2).
It seems to me that the situation developing is this- all the backbenchers will come out on Primes and when the top Qualifiers are forced to pit without having had enough track time to build up time gaps, we’re going to see a lot of position changes. It could be the case where if you want to win or even finish well you’ll have to do a lot of passing. This might be a more interesting race than some.
Anyway, pretty tables (and they are pretty) and race updates below.
If you miss the race there will be a repeat on Speed at noon on Tuesday.
Starting Grid
| Grid | Driver | Team | Q-Time | Laps |
| 1 | Nico Hulkenberg | Williams-Cosworth | 01:14.5 | 35 |
| 2 | Sebastian Vettel | RBR-Renault | 01:15.5 | 27 |
| 3 | Mark Webber | RBR-Renault | 01:15.6 | 28 |
| 4 | Lewis Hamilton | McLaren-Mercedes | 01:15.7 | 32 |
| 5 | Fernando Alonso | Ferrari | 01:16.0 | 34 |
| 6 | Rubens Barrichello | Williams-Cosworth | 01:16.2 | 32 |
| 7 | Robert Kubica | Renault | 01:16.6 | 31 |
| 8 | Michael Schumacher | Mercedes GP | 01:16.9 | 30 |
| 9 | Felipe Massa | Ferrari | 01:17.1 | 31 |
| 10 | Vitaly Petrov | Renault | 01:17.7 | 33 |
| 11 | Jenson Button | McLaren-Mercedes | 01:19.3 | 25 |
| 12 | Kamui Kobayashi | BMW Sauber-Ferrari | 01:19.4 | 26 |
| 13 | Nico Rosberg | Mercedes GP | 01:19.5 | 23 |
| 14 | Jaime Alguersuari | STR-Ferrari | 01:19.6 | 24 |
| 15 | Nick Heidfeld | BMW Sauber-Ferrari | 01:19.9 | 26 |
| 16 | Vitantonio Liuzzi | Force India-Mercedes | 01:20.4 | 23 |
| 17 | Timo Glock | Virgin-Cosworth | 01:22.1 | 13 |
| 18 | Jarno Trulli | Lotus-Cosworth | 01:22.3 | 14 |
| 19 | Sebastien Buemi | STR-Ferrari | 01:19.8 | 24 |
| 20 | Heikki Kovalainen | Lotus-Cosworth | 01:22.4 | 14 |
| 21 | Lucas Di Grassi | Virgin-Cosworth | 01:22.8 | 13 |
| 22 | Adrian Sutil | Force India-Mercedes | 01:20.8 | 13 |
| 23 | Christian Klien | HRT-Cosworth | 01:23.1 | 15 |
| 24 | Bruno Senna | HRT-Cosworth | 01:23.8 | 15 |
Driver Standings
| Rank | Name | Team | Points |
| 1 | Fernando Alonso | Ferrari | 231 |
| 2 | Mark Webber | RBR-Renault | 220 |
| 3 | Lewis Hamilton | McLaren-Mercedes | 210 |
| 4 | Sebastian Vettel | RBR-Renault | 206 |
| 5 | Jenson Button | McLaren-Mercedes | 189 |
| 6 | Felipe Massa | Ferrari | 143 |
| 7 | Robert Kubica | Renault | 124 |
| 8 | Nico Rosberg | Mercedes GP | 122 |
| 9 | Michael Schumacher | Mercedes GP | 66 |
| 10 | Rubens Barrichello | Williams-Cosworth | 47 |
| 11 | Adrian Sutil | Force India-Mercedes | 47 |
| 12 | Kamui Kobayashi | BMW Sauber-Ferrari | 31 |
| 13 | Vitantonio Liuzzi | Force India-Mercedes | 21 |
| 14 | Vitaly Petrov | Renault | 19 |
| 15 | Nico Hulkenberg | Williams-Cosworth | 18 |
| 16 | Sebastien Buemi | STR-Ferrari | 8 |
| 17 | Pedro de la Rosa | BMW Sauber-Ferrari | 6 |
| 18 | Nick Heidfeld | BMW Sauber-Ferrari | 6 |
| 19 | Jaime Alguersuari | STR-Ferrari | 3 |
| 20 | Heikki Kovalainen | Lotus-Cosworth | 0 |
| 21 | Jarno Trulli | Lotus-Cosworth | 0 |
| 22 | Karun Chandhok | HRT-Cosworth | 0 |
| 23 | Bruno Senna | HRT-Cosworth | 0 |
| 24 | Lucas di Grassi | Virgin-Cosworth | 0 |
| 25 | Timo Glock | Virgin-Cosworth | 0 |
| 26 | Sakon Yamamoto | HRT-Cosworth | 0 |
| 27 | Christian Klien | HRT-Cosworth | 0 |
Team Standings
| Rank | Team | Points |
| 1 | RBR-Renault | 426 |
| 2 | McLaren-Mercedes | 399 |
| 3 | Ferrari | 374 |
| 4 | Mercedes GP | 188 |
| 5 | Renault | 143 |
| 6 | Force India-Mercedes | 68 |
| 7 | Williams-Cosworth | 65 |
| 8 | BMW Sauber-Ferrari | 43 |
| 9 | STR-Ferrari | 11 |
| 10 | Lotus-Cosworth | 0 |
| 11 | HRT-Cosworth | 0 |
| 12 | Virgin-Cosworth | 0 |
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Kobayashi finishes in 10th.
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