Spanish Grand Prix Qualifying
May 12th, 2007 by AJ
It was a complete Scarlet and Silver fest today in the qualifying for the Spanish grand prix. The first two rounds in qualifying were dominated by the black and silver of McLaren. The third round was vastly different and one of the best qualification runs in recent years (more on this below)
The first round was pretty lackluster with both the Spyker Ferraris, the Toyota of Ralf Schumacher, the customer Toyota of Wurz and most disappointingly, Mark Webber being relegated to the absolute back of the grid.
The second round was much more interesting with the McLarens and Ferraris trading the provisional pole and Takuma Sato’s Super Aguri stalling in mid lap. Anthony Davidson had a scary moment when he spun his Super Aguri, barely missing the wall. Regrettably Nico Rosberg failed to make the cut for the final round of qualifying ending up at the eleventh position. Both the Hondas also finished their day in this round, failing to make it to the last qualifying round.
The final round was the most exciting round of not just the day but the past few seasons as well. Lewis Hamilton was the first to line up at the lights to get ahead of the others, just ahead of Kimi Raikonnen. Hamilton waited in the blistering sun for most than a minute, putting his engine to a significant risk of overheating. But it was worth it as he went out ahead of Kimi who tried his best to overtake Hamilton before the start of their flying laps. Hamilton drove defensively at low revs to try and cool his engines a little bit before he went all out.
Hamilton gained the first provisional pole, followed by Kimi. Both were soon beaten down as the speeds increased during the fuel burn phase. As the other drivers set their qualification times, with just 4 minutes to spare, both the Ferraris and McLarens came out again to go for the top positions, with Lewis again beating Kimi by an inch coming out ahead of the Ferrari. It must have frustrated Kimi a lot but he had the last laugh when he went faster than Hamilton. But both were beaten by the seemingly master of qualification, Felipe Massa followed by Alonso who just missed the pole position by three hundredths of a second.
The race now is set for another exciting start with Massa, Alonso, Kimi and Lewis in the lead and in that order. The renaults only managed to finish at the tail end of the top 10 separated by Coulthard.