For the second F1 race in a row, former four-time world champion Sebastian Vettel will lead an all-Ferrari front row after qualifying for the Chinese Grand Prix at the 16-turn, 5.451km Shanghai International Circuit near Shanghai today.
Despite Vettel’s teammate Kimi Raikkonen looking stronger than the German throughout most of the three segments of qualifying, Vettel stormed to his 52nd career pole position with a lap of 1min. 31.095sec, just 0.087 seconds faster than Raikkonen’s best effort.
The big surprise of qualifying was how far off the Ferraris the defending constructors’ champions Mercedes AMG F1 were. Valtteri Bottas’ best effort in Q3 was 0.530 seconds slower than Vettel’s lap. Bottas’ teammate and defending drivers’ champion Lewis Hamilton got beaten in qualifying by Bottas for the second time in a row, this time by just 0.050 seconds.
Mercedes put the disappointing (by their lofty standards) show in qualifying down to difficulties with managing tyre temperatures. On harder compound tyres, there may yet be a chance for Mercedes to get the better of Ferrari.
The team will be cursing their misfortune from the opening round in Australia and will also rue not being able to take victory in the previous round in Bahrain when they looked to be clearly faster in race trim.
Max Verstappen of Red Bull-Tag Heuer (Renault) was fifth fastest with a lap 0.701 seconds slower than Vettel’s best effort. Verstappen was ahead of his teammate Daniel Ricciardo who was 0.853 seconds off pole and came close to being eliminated in Q1 itself after a failed turbo in the third free practice session earlier today forced the team to rebuild the engine.
'THE HULK' IS BEST OF THE REST
Behind F1’s current big three teams, Nico Hulkenberg was the ‘best of the rest’ for Renault F1 in seventh place with a lap 1.437 seconds slower than the pole position time.
Just over two tenths of a second behind Hulkenberg was Force India-Mercedes’ Sergio Perez as the team’s VJM11 continues to get upgraded throughout the opening rounds of the season after the upgrades could not be tried out in pre-season testing itself.
The second Renault of Carlos Sainz Jr. was only 0.061 seconds behind Perez and Haas-Ferrari’s Romain Grosjean was only 0.036 seconds behind Sainz to complete the top ten.
F1’s tight midfield battle is almost as engrossing as the battle at the head of the field given the quality of drivers in teams like Haas-Ferrari, Renault F1, McLaren-Renault, Force India-Mercedes and Toro Rosso-Honda and how close they are to each other.
Even Williams-Mercedes seemed to find a little pace at Shanghai this time around.
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