Sebastian Vettel delivered Red Bull Racing its first Formula 1 pole position with a brilliant last-gasp lap in China, as Jenson Button and Brawn GP’s early stranglehold on the 2009 season was shattered in qualifying.Completing a new-look order at the head of the field was, totally unexpectedly, Fernando Alonso – Renault’s fortunes seemingly transformed by the introduction of an interim diffuser from Saturday morning’s final practice onwards.Mark Webber completed RBR’s best ever qualifying session by claiming third in the second RB5 having held provisional pole going into the dying seconds.
All this meant that hitherto pacesetter Brawn was shuffled down to fourth and fifth, with Rubens Barrichello outqualifying championship leader Button for the first time this season.Indeed after all the week’s arguments over the teams running two-step diffusers, the other two ‘diffuser gang’ squads were also usurped at the front with Jarno Trulli (Toyota) sixth and Nico Rosberg (Williams) seventh.And to heighten expectations that the early pacesetting teams may not run away with the championship as feared after all, the sport’s two big guns, Ferrari and McLaren, also showed much-needed improved form.Kimi Raikkonen was eighth in the lead Ferrari, although the Italian squad again couldn’t get two cars into Q3 after Felipe Massa was dumped out in the second phase.
And arch-rival McLaren’s previously steady progress away from the lower midfield seems to have been accelerated by its own interim diffuser and new front wing as Lewis Hamilton made the pole shootout for the first time in 2009, eventually claiming ninth.Rookie Sebastien Buemi completed a banner day for the Red Bull family by making the top 10 for the first time at just the third attempt, with STR another team to have made tangible progress since the Malaysian GP two weeks ago.
After practice form suggested that Brawn may face a more difficult time in Shanghai than at the first two races, RBR served notice of its intention to give the Brackley squad a run for its money in Q2.
Vettel and Webber lapped over 0.3s quicker than both Brawn cars in the low-fuel second session, and after Barrichello had topped the first Q3 runs Webber threw down the gauntlet as the decisive final laps got underway with a time of 1m36.466s.Team-mate Vettel had only needed one flying lap to top the second session order and repeated the feat in the third, sitting out most of the 10 minutes before uncorking a sensational 1m36.184s to seal his second career pole.
Alonso then produced an even more unexpected lap which split the two RBRs, 0.2s shy of Vettel, in a revised R29 car that had completed just six laps in its new form in final practice. While the Shanghai pole shootout was arguably the best of the season so far, the first two stages of the session also produced other unexpected results.
BMW had failed to get either car into the top 10 throughout practice and that form continued into qualifying – although things played out even worse that it may have feared as Robert Kubica was a shock Q1 casualty and will start 17th.
A late flying lap ensured team-mate Nick Heidfeld’s progression into the second phase and the German missed out on Q3 by just one hundredth of a second, although 11th place probably still represents a good result given the team’s current problems.
The second McLaren of Heikki Kovalainen will share the sixth row with the BMW, the Finn not being able to match Hamilton after deciding not to run with the MP4-24’s new front wing or diffuser.Massa faces another tough race from 13th on the grid, the Brazilian failing to make the final phase for the second weekend in a row.
Although at least he can take some comfort in the fact he at least got out of Q1 unlike at Sepang.Perhaps Saturday’s most disappointed man, however, was Timo Glock in the second Toyota.His problems started when a gearbox problem in final practice necessitated a change of the unit for qualifying, meaning he picked up the mandatory five-place grid penalty.
However, his TF109 still should have been fast enough to secure passage into the top 10, but Glock failed to even get that far and his 13th fastest time becomes 19th on the grid.The next five drivers are therefore promoted a place, with Kazuki Nakajima the first to benefit, moving up a spot from 15th, after the Japanese driver again failed to exploit the full potential of the Williams as demonstrated by Rosberg.
Another man to fall well short of his team-mate’s exploits was STR’s Bourdais – the Frenchman comprehensively outqualified by rookie Buemi for the second time in three races, failing to get past Q1.Nelson Piquet Jr’s long-standing problems over a single lap showed no sign off easing as he slumped to a Q1 exit for the third consecutive race.
While the Brazilian’s car doesn’t feature Renault’s interim diffuser, he nevertheless lapped half a second slower than he did when he set the fifth-fastest time in the morning’s final practice session.Kubica on the other hand experienced a Q1 elimination for the first time in his career after he failed to lap quicker than the 18th quickest effort – a time that worryingly for BMW was 0.3s below the cut line.
Having failed to finish higher than sixth in three previous visits to Shanghai, Kubica admitted he was desperate for a change of luck this year especially on the back of a point-less start to 2009.But despite ditching KERS for Saturday’s running after finding it of little benefit during a difficult Friday, his weekend of woe worsened as a continuing lack of grip continued to hamper his F1.09’s speed.
Force India, meanwhile, was adrift at the foot of the times with Adrian Sutil ahead of Giancarlo Fisichella, Sutil promoted off the back row courtesy of the demoted Glock.
The team expects to make more progress when the European season gets underway in two races time and the Spanish round now can’t come soon enough after both drivers lapped 0.7s slower than the struggling Kubica alone.
Chinese GP grid
1. VETTEL Red Bull
2. ALONSO Renault
3. WEBBER Red Bull
4. BARRICHELLO Brawn
5. BUTTON Brawn
6. TRULLI Toyota
7. ROSBERG Williams
8. RAIKKONEN Ferrari
9. HAMILTON McLaren
10. BUEMI Toro Rosso
11. HEIDFELD BMW
12. KOVALAINEN McLaren
13. MASSA Ferrari
14. NAKAJIMA Williams
15. BOURDAIS Toro Rosso
16. PIQUET Renault
17. KUBICA BMW
18. SUTIL Force India
19. GLOCK Toyota*
20. FISICHELLA Force India
* five-place penalty for gearbox change
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