Stunning quali from Vettel, and despite being 0.7s off the McLarens look to be in a little world of their own too. But did anyone else seem to pick up on how "quiet" the entire RBR teams and drivers were after grabbing pole? Normally we see Vettel jumping around hugging the team and giving victory speeches, this time he barely smiled even when talking to Lewis and Jensen. Problem with the car? Pulled out too much performance? Any other ideas?
KERS failure? The cars probably fine, as are the tires. He should have enough pace to cope tomorrow regardless. Oh and Mark Webber is at the back, that'll put a downer on things.
Something going on behind the scenes, Vettel said on his radio afterwards that it was a really hard session to keep concentrating. Perhaps they're worried about KERS.
Hope so, not that I have anything against Vettel I just want some more excitement at the start of the race and it gives Vettel the chance to prove to people if he has the ability to overtake and fight for posistion
People are saying Red Bull wont run away with it this year. They had reliablilty problems at the start of last season and won the championship comfortambly, now they have won the first two races taking it easy, im a Mclaren fan but i really cant see them coming back in to contention anytime soon, even if this is only the 3rd race. If they get Webber back to his best, the rest of the 'championship' teams are finished.
I can see Hamilton winning the race as he was calm and got third(clean side of the grid) and saved a set of tyres, so did Vettel and Button but they went and did an outlap on their tyres so not completely fresh.
Vettel stayed in the car 'because he came in early'. Doesn't seem like a good reason to me. I am suspicious there was something else going on. Did they want all the drivers to leave and not see in the cockpit?
Bergkamp might be on to something, I don't know, maybe they've arranged something differently in there? Different lever for KERS/DRS or something? Is there anything in the rules that says the DRS must return to the same position after use? Maybe they have a system with 2 levers, which return the rear wing to different positions, to give variable downforce? It would allow them to be quicker I guess.
Yea, they were a tad downbeat considering they had effectively slaughtered everybody in Q3 by 0.7 seconds, I cant remember a margin that large in qualifying, it is strange. Maybe the McLaren pair will take advantge of any eventualities should they occur
Vettel staying in the car - was the control panel staying illuminated? Did it indicate KERS failed? ie. battery lit, not main computer fed? Something fishy here.
Alonso had a poke around the McLaren and Red Bull after Seb got out so he'd have seen anything obvious. I doubt they're hiding anything, certainly nothing illegal because it would never get through scrutineering if its visible as soon as the driver leaves the cockpit. The excuse Horner gave seems a bit weak though, all the others had done their in-laps and got out while Vettel was still in there. Anyone notice the engineers who started sticking radiators in the sidepods? Perhaps there was a cooling issue with KERS.
Vettel isn't allowed out of the car until the stewards give him the thumbs up. That's what he said anyway...
They're getting bored. They knew Vettel would take pole easily. The only real reason for the downbeat bit is that Webber is not well placed; I am certain they were hoping to use him as a spoiler, having already planned for him to have more stops than Vettel. Webber is very much the guinea pig, testing out all of the flawed bits. And as soon as something works, it goes straight onto the other car. Nice one Horner…
I don't agree that Red Bull are using Webber as a guinea pig. Last season all their early season unreliability hit Vettel, that's the way it goes. He's been unlucky Webber, it's just been one thing after another, I thought he drove brilliantly in Malaysia and thought it would kick start his season, now he's had a disaster in qualifying. I'm a little surprised they went for a prime run, the degradation is expected to be less here so there's less need to save a set and he was already handicapped by having no KERS and losing setup time this morning. They scored a massive own goal today.
I hope the Red Bull KERS is broken. I've nothing against Red Bull but I want an exciting season. If their KERS is bust for the race tomorrow then both Jenson and Lewis could jump Vettel at the start and set up a good race!
Alonso wandered past looking at rear-end not in the cockpit as far as I could tell. Are there instruments which Vettel could operate re- KERS etc? Why did the guys bring the blowers out for the front-end? Overheated what? Instruments showing something they wanted to hide?
I'm not buying waiting for the FIA to tell him he can get out. All the other drivers were out no problem. And even with Webber way down I'd expect Vettel to at least be happy. I think there may have been a heat issue, hense the blowers. I guess we'll find out tomorrow
It could be the engine tbh, it did puff out smoke in practice but they snubbed it saying nothing was actually wrong with it, just being careful? If it was really serious they would just take the penalty and hope for the best IMHO...
As silverarrow says, if the problem was race threatening, they'd have taken the grid drop and worked on it rather than hoping the problem goes away. 5 places isn't too much for a Red Bull to catch up with their pace. Its better than retiring!
