Sebastian Vettel underlined the strength of his world championship bid with another stunning performance yesterday, outpacing his rivals to grab pole position for the Chinese Grand Prix.
A flawless and brilliant lap in the final seconds of an absorbing and closely contested session enabled the 22-year-old German wunderkind to beat his Red Bull teammate, Australian Mark Webber, into second place. It brought Vettel’s third pole in four races this year, the Red Bull team’s third straight front row lockout and a fourth straight pole and the eighth pole of his career.
“Yeah baby,” he screeched from his cockpit on the team radio after his pole lap in the car he has nicknamed “Luscious Liz.” “Wow.”
PHOTO: EPA
His Red Bull team chief Christian Horner congratulated him on his perfect drive and asked: “Who needs ride height controls?”
That was a tongue-in-cheek reference to unfounded speculation that the dominant Red Bull team may have held a technical advantage over their rivals in the early rounds of this year’s 19-race title race.
Horner added: “What a lap by Seb. He has struggled a bit this weekend and then that. I have no idea where that lap came from.”
Webber had snatched the fastest lap time with barely a minute remaining when, in a final flurry of activity, both McLaren drivers made bids to take pole but failed, before Vettel took over.
Vettel, who won the Malaysian Grand Prix two weeks ago to move to third in the world championship standings, was understandably delighted with his efforts.
“It was tough. I was not so happy yesterday and this morning, especially when Mark was quite a bit quicker than me. We did some changes and went a little bit in Mark’s direction, but it was extremely difficult,” Vettel said.
This all left the Red Bulls on the front row ahead of two-time champion Spaniard Fernando Alonso for Ferrari, German Nico Rosberg in the leading Mercedes, defending world champion Briton Jenson Button and his McLaren teammate Lewis Hamilton, the 2008 champion.
Hamilton, who had been fastest for much of the weekend in practice, was disappointed and baffled by his slip to sixth.
“We were doing so well in practice, Q1 and Q2, and then the car started bottoming a lot more in Q3,” Hamilton said.
Button was equally frustrated despite out-qualifying his teammate.
“I struggled with just getting a whole lap. I couldn’t get a whole lap with the tires — they were either not warm enough at the start of the lap or they were overheating at the end,” Button told reporters.
Brazilian Felipe Massa, leading the world championship, was seventh in the second Ferrari, Pole Robert Kubica eighth for Renault, German Michael Schumacher ninth for Mercedes and German Adrian Sutil 10th for Force India.
Seven-time champion Schumacher, 41, looked relaxed despite being comprehensively outpaced again.
“It was very tricky out there and I just couldn’t find the right balance for the car,” he said.
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