Nov 07 2010

F1: Interlagos

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

rustymancuso581

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  1. Kobayashi finishes in 10th.

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