Saturday, September 5, 2015

Lewis Hamilton grabs pole at Monza

Lewis Hamilton grabs pole at Monza


Lewis Hamilton had dominated the practice sessions yesterday and today and also maintained his form to grab the pole in Monza in the F1 Italian Grand Prix. History shows that the pole sitter mostly wins the race in Italy.

This is the home ground of Ferrari and the two Ferrari drivers didn’t disappoint the crowd. Kimi Raikkonen scored P2 followed by Sebastian Vettel in P3. Kimi Raikkonen of Ferrari came in 1m 23.631 seconds to score the P2. Sebastian Vettel of Ferrari will start the race tomorrow in P3. He had a time of 1m 23. 685s.

Nico Rosberg had to revert back to his older engine and couldn’t beat the two Ferrari drivers. He had to be satisfied with 4th. He had a time of 1m 23. 703s

In the Q3, most of the drivers except Sergion Perez and Marcus Ericsson choose to set to do two laps one at the beginning and the other at the end. In the first such lap, Hamilton scored 1m23.397 for the provisional pole. He was 0.3 seconds faster than Vettel. In the last lap, Lewis Hamilton couldn’t better his own time.

Felipe Massa of Williams and Valtteri Bottas of Williams came in at P5 and P6. Felipe Massa’s time was 1m 23. 940s. Valtteri Bottas was 1m 24. 127 seconds.
Sergio Perez of Force India came in 7th with a time of 1m 24. 626s. He will start in the 4th row. Romain Grosjean of Lotus will start alongside Perez in the 4th row, as he was 8th with a time of 1m 25.054s.

Nico Hulkenberg had a power failure after the first lap and couldn’t take part in the second run. His time of 1m 25.317 was sufficient for P9. Marcus Ericsson of Sauber was 1m 26.214s and was P10. He is however being investigated for impeding Pastor Maldonado during Q1.

In the Q2, Pastor Maldonado of Lotus, Felipe Nasr and Carlos Sainz of Toro Rosso, Daniil Kvyat and Daniel Ricciardo of Red Bull were eliminated from the top ten shoot out as the 11th to 15th placed drivers.

The past results in Monza showed that amazing speed to clinch
The F1 Qualifying is a three stage affair with the first session or Q1 run for 18 minutes where the bottom most 5 drivers are eliminated. In Q2 the rest ie 15 cars run where the top ten qualify for the Q3.

Drivers eliminated in the Q1

Jenson Button
Fernando Alonso
Will Stevens
Roberto Merhi
Max Verstappen

Jenson Button of McLaren had a time of 1m 26.058 and his teammate Fernando Alonso was 1m 26.154 seconds. Will Stevens of Marussia clocked a time of 1m 27.731 and his teammate Roberto Merhi had a time of 1m 27.912. Verstappen of Toro Rosso had an unfortunate incident where his engine cover blew off and he couldn’t do a timed lap.

This year has been unbelievably bad for McLaren who are down with the Marussia cars at the bottom. Though McLaren team has an excuse that they are using Honda engines and Honda has just returned to F1 meaning they are behind, it is not know if all the problems are due to the engine. According to Honda, they are better than the Renault engine and about 30-40 hp slower than the Mercedes and about 25 hp slower than the Ferrari. From that one can guess that atleast McLaren should have been faster than the Toro Rosso and Red Bulls. It appears that McLaren with two world champions are driving trucks while others are racing.

Italian Grand Prix Qualifying Results 2015


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