Ambient 28° Track 37° Humidity 54% Wind 0.5m/s
Prelude
Dryish weather ruled, with still grey skies after the proper soaking of the previous day. Button continued to have miserable luck with a broken/damaged floor during FP3 and Mercedes appeared to be back on song once the track dried. With only an hour of dry running it all remained a bit up in the air as the cars prepared to hit the circuit.
Summary
Q1 was characterized by the fact the F1 live timing app crashed and it’s astonishing how much detail never makes it into the telly. Nevertheless. it was Verstappen with the first run and as the times rolled in Hamilton again was aces, rocking up with a 1:33.595. Rosberg followed with a close 2nd and when the dust had cleared, it was Nasr, Button, Stevens, Ericsson and Rossi on the outside looking in. Ericsson in particular had a lurid slide, taking him almost to the barriers at Spoon.
The second bite of the apple saw Lewis improve his time on the hard tyres to a 1:32.844, again trailed by Rosberg as it became beyond obvious that Merc were back into full Death Star mode. Further back, it was again bad news for Button, who had been given the wrong engine mode and drained his battery halfway through his first lap. AS the bottom 5 got ready for their last efforts, Verstappen parked his car on the exit (typically thoughtless teenager) when it ran out of juice, bringing out the double yellows and effectively ending the session before the final shootout.
Button, Ericsson, Nasr, Stevens and Rossi all were done, as was Verstappen who would get P15 due to his dead car.
Q2 saw the Mercedes roles reverse as Rosberg proved the quicker on the Medium tyre, rolling up a 1:32.632, with Hamilton about 0.2s back. Worth noting that Lewis’ Q1 time on the Hard tyre would also have put him P2 for Q2 as well. In fact, such was their advantage Mercedes’ Q1 times on Hard tyres were fast enough to still get them the front row in Q3. Officially, Singapore goes into the one off column then. AS for those fighting over the scraps, it was Hulkenberg who suffered most, just not getting over on the car and watching his P8 plunge to P11 as the checkers came down. Grosjean had an epic last 2 sectors to claim P10 and Kvyat and Perez both managed to get themselves out of the bottom 5 after the checkers fell.
Hulkenberg, Sainz, Maldonado, Alonso and (natch) Verstappen were kicked to the kerb.
Q3 saw Rosberg out first and he and Hamilton again were balanced on a knife edge, with Hamilton ahead in S1, but Rosberg taking the other 2 sectors to claim provisional pole by 0.076s over Hamilton. Behind them, Bottas led Vettel then Massa to round out the top 5.
With the clock running down and the Mercedes duel winding up, it was a rare quali with some suspense left in it, particularly with Williams and Ferrari so closely intertwined. AS the runners launched into their final runs, Kvyat went slightly wide approaching the Hairpin, caught the grass and had a rather large shunt (he was OK but it looked a bit scary), bringing out the red flag and ending the session before any 2nd times could be registered.
So to Sunday we go to settle the question once and for all. With Lewis faster on the Hard tyre and Rosberg faster on the Medium, we might actually have a bit of a race at the front for a change. The interlacing of Williams and Ferrari between P3 and P6 should guarantee further fireworks and as always, Verstappen has contrived to wind up far back in the pack, always good for a few showy overtakes.
Have fun in the comments and good luck sorting out who would’ve been faster without the red flag. My vote goes to Fangio. See you tomorrow!
‘The Collective’ won’t be happy that their supreme commander was given a 3 place grid penalty for bad parking.
I thought immediately if he was dumb or taking one from Schumi’s book… So no surprise here.
That was a massive crash.
Verstappen is really quite a dirt bag.
Hopefully alonso sends him flowers, again Jenson was about to pip alonso on that lap.
Alonso using Jensons misfortune as a way to celebrate his mega best lap ever at Suzuka to end up 14th!
Classic dirtbag Alonso.
I hope all the ‘gravel trap’ fans start to realize this also means they are fans of injuring a driver for unnecessary reasons (inevitable).
Thankful Danni’s ok.
It’s not the injury we like. It’s the fact that the best drivers in the world would be not longer be able to make mistakes and still don’t really get affected by it, which gets the likes amongst us gravel lovers.
We can solve track limit abuse with technology (think of a video game when you drive off course and get slowed down – very doable on F1 cars). We do not need physical/material solutions for this problem that have inherent safety risks and will eventually result in major injury/death – Kvyats open cockpit could have easily come down on the guard rail helmet first. Had there been injury – I’d blame the dinosaur gravel lovers – they need to become extinct.
Gravel = cars upside down/motorcyles tumbling. This is what you want?
Or better yet, why not follow MotoGP? if it’s a persistent act, drop one place or issue a time penalty of 25 seconds. Simples, problem solved.
Gravel traps are there to tell the drivers “Put a tyre here and you are out of the race”. Drivers push their cars and themselves to the limit and they are paid millions to do so every time without ever crossing that limit. Nobody likes seeing a driver get injured or killed, but with tarmac as run-off areas, drivers know that they can get away with anything basically.
How can I help you understand we can create a system that punishes drivers in real time using location tracking and power reduction penalties, thus dropping them back a few seconds maybe more. Wouldnt you rather see your favorite driver stay in the race and have to fight back after losing a few seconds due to a penalty? Nobody would cross the line intentionally with a system like that because the human factor is removed, it punishes everyone equally. Best yest, its a cost reduction strategy – less heavy damage.
We could have a flashing light like the harvesting light to show cars with time penalties applied to them.
We are not going back to gravel traps, I advise to get on board wtih that asap because then you can start to think of ways to make the sport better given the real life situation of more and more car park tracks.
@Layercake
Such a system already exists, yet the marshals didn’t punish Vettel and others for constantly going over the track limits at Spa or elsewhere. You can’t blame people for not believing in your proposals when similar rules are not working as it is.
@aapje. There is no system that automatically slows a car for a abusing track limits and is computer controlled – no human in the decision loop.
Whatever system you’re referring to is nothing like my idea so please don’t tie the two together.
The problem isn’t that we cant solve the issue. The problem is that we don’t solve the issue. And gravel does do that.
If it was tarmac the initial impact with barriers would have been more forceful. I guess you could argue for either way.
The car was flipped upside down by gravel – this is the problem. Cars do get upside down on tarmac but those are situations where the car was going to get upside down no matter what. When a car digs into gravel and flips, that is preventable, if you think I’m wrong just look at every modern track. I guess we cant argue for either way.