Italian Grand Prix Qualifying Report

First I have to give a big thumbs up to Sebastian Vettel of Toro Rosso for his darn good qualifying effort to grab pole. The conditions throughout qualifying were terrible with rain, rain, rain and more rain, but Vettel topped everyone.

As far as Nick Heidfeld and Robert Kubica go, it was pretty uneventful, but each session left me thinking there would be more. Both drivers did pretty well in Q1 moving on in 10th and 11th. Heidfeld barely made it into Q3 finishing 10th with Robert booted out in 11th so close to swapping 10th place with Felipe Massa.

Nick:

“The conditions were quite difficult during qualifying, but in the beginning it went pretty well for me. Once I made it into the top ten of qualifying I was expecting more. The last laps were disappointing. Instead of more grip I got less. We now have to figure out why this happened.”

Robert:

“We were a bit unlucky today as the gap to position 10 and the third qualifying session was very narrow. We put a new set of tyres on the car for the second qualifying session, as we planned not to make a pit stop in the session. You need two or three laps to make the tyres work. The track dried up after the first laps, but then it started to rain heavily so unfortunately I was not able to improve the lap times. Congratulations to Torro Rosso and Sebastian Vettel for their first pole position.”

The starting grid is quite different than anyone would guess with both Toro Rosso’s out qualifying both Ferraris and Nico Rosberg in 5th. Then you look farther down and see Kimi Raikkonen in 14th and way off the pace Lewis Hamilton in 15th.

We don’t know what the fuel loads were for Q3, but it’s a safe bet that there will be a few light cars at the front come tomorrow and maybe some one stoppers lower down the grid where Raikkonen and Hamilton sit. Whatever the fuel loads, tomorrow could be another wet race, but there’s sure to be some hard chargers coming to the front.

Tomorrow: Cloudy with periods of light rain. High 64F. Winds ENE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 60%.

This was a pretty exciting and unexpected qualifying and I’m looking forward to this leading to an exciting race tomorrow.