Australian GP - My Saturday In Melbourne - Practice and Qualifying

March 15th, 2008

Australian GP - My Saturday In Melbourne - Practice and Qualifying

It was much more pleasant today. The temperatures dropped by more than 10 degrees. But season seems to be off to hot start .

hamilton australia pole position

The free practice was unlike any I have seen or heard of as far as I can remember. There were at one stage 20 cars within 1 second … Only two Super Aguris lagged behind. At the end the timesheets looked strange - Kubica fastest, no Ferrari, no McLaren top ten. Heidfeld and Webber were quick to dismiss any possibility of two front running teams being in trouble. Webber said something like “it is only practice, they simply do not need to practice as much as we do”.

More Photos here

Then the qualifying began .

Q1 - Elimination of Super Aguri cars was expected. Force India cars probably hoped for Q2 appearance after promising runs by Fisichella in practice sessions. It was not to be… Bourdais was struggling the whole morning with his car set up and his qualifying result reflects his problems. Nelson Piquet will be in trouble with Flavio …

Q2 - The first driver to be eliminated was Kimi Raikkonen, even before the session began. His car suffered some problems with a fuel pump and stopped at the pit lane entry during the Q1. Actually just in front of the pitlane entry and he was not allowed to take any further part in qualifying. Then Webber crashed out after what looked like some sort of mechanical failure (but I am only speculating here). This left 14 cars fighting it out for 10 places in Q3. It was very close, and if this is sign of things to come we are in for very exciting season. At the end the unlucky four were Nakajima, Button, Alonso and Barrichelo.

Kubica Australia P2

Q3 - What a difference from the boring fuel burns of the past ! The new Q3 is only 10 minutes long and it was a kind of mad dash. I do not remember when was the last time there were 7 different teams taking part in Q3, and it could have been 8, Barrichello was very close … Massa today never looked like serious contender for pole position so it was down to McLarens and surprisingly BMW Saubers. It is hard to tell what were the fuel levels in all the cars, but Kubica was definitely quick. He was on the limit, or slightly beyond. The brief encounter with grass in one of the corners probably cost him the pole position. He will neveretheless start from the front row for the first time in his career. Pole position went to Lewis Hamilton, P3 to Heikki Kovalainen.

Timo Glock will be relegated 5 places for gearbox change…

Qualifying result - Australian GP

1. Hamilton - McLaren
2. Kubica - BMW Sauber
3. Kovalainen - McLaren
4. Massa - Ferrari
5. Heidfeld - BMW Sauber
6. Trulli - Toyota
7. Rosberg - Williams
8. Coulthard - Red Bull
9. Glock - Toyota
10. Vettel - Toro Rosso
11. Barrichello - Honda
12. Alonso - Renault
13. Button - Honda
14. Nakajima - Williams
15. Webber - Red Bull
16. Raikkonen - Ferrari
17. Fisichella - Force India
18. Bourdais - Toro Rosso
19. Sutil - Force India
20. Sato - Super Aguri
21. Piquet - Renault
22. Davidson - Super Aguri

Winners - Honda, Vettel (despite not taking part in Q3), Kubica
Loosers - Ferrari, Piquet, Alonso, Webber

tags: Tags: Australian GP, BMW Sauber, Ferrari, Kimi Raikkonen, Lewis Hamilton, McLaren, Melbourne, qualifying, Robert Kubica

RSS feed | Trackback URI

4 comments »

Comment by Stew

March 15th, 2008 at 8:25 pm

Loved that Q3! Honda was a pleasant surprise especially Rubens. I thought he just might squeeze through, but no.

Kimi’s not a happy man right now. What a disaster for him.

Glock loses 10 places for the gearbox and a blocking penalty. gotta learn the ropes Timo.

Are the BMW’s fast? You have to wonder with the performance today. I’m convinced pole was Kubica’s if not for the grass excursion. There was a 10th or 2 right there.

Stew’s last blog post..Qualifying Down Under

Reply to this comment

Comment by Kotenok

March 16th, 2008 at 8:59 am

Hey Wolf, seems there is much action there! Do you enjoy the GP?

I’ve done the proof to access the marshal’s squad today, seems to be an quite easy test and only demand logic and well teached articles, but there appear some harder questions than one expects. Anyway, this competitive world won’t allow me to live a F1 race during some time (and I’m still waiting to the results!!). Anyway, I know the topics well I think I’ve done it, and hope to get the chance after join the marshals from Catalonian track to get a FIA official license, this will be someday.

I advise you ALL to get this expirience someday in your homecountry track (you need to contact their organizators and call or meet the Competition Department and then look forward to the formation programs). There is much more to learn than many can believe and you’ll understand from inside the extremly hard work which racing competitions marshals decided to take part. Such job isn’t paid at all, that’s done for pure love for the competitions. You need your 5 senses to arrive home without any scrach, and be happy to be more close to the fastest cars on the planet. Yeah! Seems a great job,many choose to relax in their weekend, go walking on the beach, visit grandma, eat in some cute place at the evening… Racing fanatics choose to spend their time in such place >:)

Reply to this comment

Comment by sidepodcast