Sebastian Vettel grabbed his 10th pole of the season

Italian Grand Prix, Monza - Qualifying Result

It was world champion Sebastian Vettel once again who outqualifies everyone on track with a bench mark time of 1min 22.275sec almost half a second faster than second best man Lewis Hamilton.

Vettel continued to perform well throughout the weekend with best lap times in both FP2 and FP3 and now pole in qualifying. This is his 10th pole position of the season out of 13 grand prix and 25th of his career.

Vettel celebrates his first victory at Monza back in 2008 by wearing tribute helmet for Toro Rosso which gave him that sweet victory.

Petrov was seen wearing a black helmet in tribute to crash that happen on Wednesday in Russia which killed several former NHL players and coaches and was a setback to hockey. The plane was also lifting Kontinental Hockey League’s Lokomotive Yaroslavl team.

It could not get much hotter with 44deg Celsius being the track temperature and 30deg Celsius is the air temperature. The competitive afternoon in the Monza, Italy saw the two Mclaren’s competing side by side with the Sebastian Vettel red bull for pole position.

 

As it happens in Q3:

Ferrari were the first to come out on track, followed by Mclaren’s and Sebastian Vettel in Red Bull with Vitaly Petrov in Renault. With the first round over it was clear that Vettel has outperformed everone else with 1min 22.613sec. But the benchmark was not enough as the teams gear up for their second run with Mercedes and Webber coming to contest for the pole.

As the team struggled in their second run, Vettel come out high by breaking his own time.

Mclaren’s followed Vettel for P2 and P3 with Fernando Alonso is the only hope for Ferrari at the home circuit at Monza. The silent crowd saw Alonso and Massa settling for P4 and P6 with Webber sandwiching between them.

Petrov outqualified both the Mercedes for P7 with Michael Schumacher this time qualifying ahead of his teammate Nico Rosberg.

Bruno Senna in the second Renault did not set the time in Q3 and will start at P10 to save tyres.

As it happens in Q2:

With Q2, all the teams came out to set their benchmark for the run. But Force India came out only when 6mins left for the Q2 to give it their best shot.

With three mins left for the session, the real drama started with Hamilton on 8th, Petrov on 9th and Di Resta knocking teammate Sutil for 10th. Vettel had done enough at 1min 22.914sec to stay in garage, So did the other top 6 drivers.

Di Resta, Senna, Sutil, Barrichello, Maldonado, Perez, Buemi, Kobayashi started fighting for P9 and P10. With Hamilton easily going into P3 with Petrov staying in garage from P9.

Buemi settled for P16, so did Barrichello, Maldonado, Perez were knocked out. The real drama came with Paul Di Resta left short by 2sec as the chequered flag was waved and the opportunity seeked by Senna to knock out Resta from 10th.

Di Resta and Adrian Sutil share the 6th grid with Di Resta out-qualifying his teammate once again. They were followed by Barrichello, Maldonado, Perez, Buemi and Kobayashi.

As it happens in Q1:

The session saw some fight to reach Q2 between the mid runners that included Williams, Toro Rosso, Kobayashi in Sauber and Senna in Renault.

The session started with Trulli jumping onto the Kerbs at turn 1. As the backmarker tried to qualify for Q2, the top teams easily made their markwhile they stick with hard tyres.

Mclaren and Red Bull easily maintain the pace with hard tyres. Lewis being the only driver to cross 1min 23sec barrier with Q1 fastest time of 1min 23.976sec.

Only after 9mins into the session, Maldonado spun his car onto the parabolic curve at the final corner due to the rear wing DRS flap problem while damaging his car and went straight into the Williams pit garage. However team quickly reacted to repair and changed the front wing to bring Maldonado back on track with just 5mins left onto the screen.

With the last five mins, all drivers already cleared through 107% percent rule, the real competition to get through Q2 started for mid fielders on soft tyres.

As the chequered flag was waved, Alguersuari was not able to make it throught the Q2 and first to start at P18 followed by the two Team Lotus cars of Trulli and Kovalainen, then Virgins of Glock and Ambrosio. At the back the two HRT’s of Ricciardo and Liuzzi.

Ricciardo for the first time out-qualifying his teammate Liuzzi.

 

Pos	Driver	Team	Q1	Q2	Q3	Laps
1	Sebastian Vettel	Red Bull - Renault	1min 24.002sec	1min 22.914sec	1min 22.275sec	15
2	Lewis Hamilton	Mclaren - Mercedes	1min 23.976sec	1min 23.172sec	1min 22.725sec	16
3	Jenson Button	Mclaren - Mercedes	1min 24.013sec	1min 23.031sec	1min 22.777sec	17
4	Fernando Alonso	Ferrari	1min 24.134sec	1min 23.342sec	1min 22.841sec	18
5	Mark Webber	Red Bull - Renault	1min 24.148sec	1min 23.387sec	1min 22.972sec	14
6	Felipe Massa	Ferrari	1min 24.523sec	1min 23.681sec	1min 23.188sec	17
7	Vitaly Petrov	Renault	1min 24.486sec	1min 23.741sec	1min 23.530sec	19
8	Michael Schumacher	Mercedes GP	1min 25.108sec	1min 23.671sec	1min 23.777sec	13
9	Nico Rosberg	Mercedes GP	1min 24.550sec	1min 23.335sec	1min 24.477sec	17
10	Bruno Senna	Renault	1min 24.914sec	1min 24.157sec	No Time	20
11	Paul Di Resta	Force India -Mercedes	1min 24.574sec	1min 24.163sec		15
12	Adrian Sutil	Force India -Mercedes	1min 24.595sec	1min 24.209sec		18
13	Rubens Barrichello	Williams -Cosworth	1min 24.975sec	1min 24.648sec		19
14	Pastor Maldonado	Williams -Cosworth	1min 24.798sec	1min 24.726sec		16
15	Sergio Perez	Sauber-Ferrari	1min 25.113sec	1min 24.845sec		17
16	Sebastien Buemi	STR - Ferrari	1min 25.164sec	1min 24.932sec		18
17	Kamui Kobayashi	Sauber - Ferrari	1min 24.879sec	1min 25.065sec		16
18	Jaime Alguersuari	STR - Ferrari	1min 25.334sec			11
19	Jarno Trulli	Lotus-Renault	1min 26.647sec			12
20	Heikki Kovalainen	Lotus-Renault	1min 27.184sec			13
21	Timo Glock	Virgin -Cosworth	1min 27.591sec			9
22	Jerome d'Ambrosio	Virgin -Cosworth	1min 27.609sec			11
23	Daniel Ricciardo	HRT - Cosworth	1min 28.054sec			12
24	Vitantonio Liuzzi	HRT - Cosworth	1min 28.231sec			11

107% Qualifying Time: 1min 29.854sec