Kimi Räikkönen & Sebastian Vettel

Kimi Räikkönen & Sebastian Vettel

lauantai 28. marraskuuta 2015

Abu Dhabi GP / Qualifying: Rosberg on pole again!

It´s inevitably the very last GP weekend of the season at hand. I feel very wistful as I know how much I´m going to miss F1 action over the long winter! But before that I´m going to seize the moment and enjoy every second of this Abu Dhabi weekend. The venue of Yas Marina Circuit is so magical. And qualifying threw some surprises...

Surprisingly the Mercedes drivers made already their first runs on the red-marked supersoft tyres. What wasn´t a surprise was their speed. Ferrari on the other hand had a different strategy: Kimi and Sebastian opted for the soft tyres. Other teams made their second runs on the supersofts including the Mercedes duo but nevertheless, Kimi was 7th fastest in spite of his tyre choice. Hamilton was topping the timesheets with his team-mate Rosberg second. The Force India duo had excellent pace as well with Perez 3rd and Hulkenberg 4th. By contrast, Ferrari´s Sebastian Vettel, who was expected to be among Mercedes´ biggest threats, failed to progress beyond Q1 thanks to a misunderstanding over his position. The German was left 16th, which was a shock to me! I was so much hoping for Sebastian to be able to challenge the Mercedes duo for a front row grid slot... McLaren´s Alonso suffered a puncture at the end of Q1 and the Spaniard was left 17th. Sauber´s Ericsson also had a technical problem on his Sauber and the Swede was out of Q2 as well.

Kimi´s driving was very convincing in Q2. The Iceman came out not until there were only 7 minutes left in the clock and the Finn made it straight in P3! It was kind of consolation for me to see Kimi driving so superbly after such a bitter disappointment in terms of Sebastian. There were more technical problems to follow in Q2: this time it was Grosjean´s E23, which came to a silent halt due to a gearbox problem and the Frenchman´s qualifying was over. Once again Perez seemed to be flying at the wheel of his Force India and the Mexican ended up 3rd fastest in the second segment. To nobody´s surprise Hamilton and Rosberg were the fastest men on track. Unfortunately Sainz bumped his Toro Rosso team-mate Verstappen out of Q3, which was another disappointment for me. Also Button, Maldonado and Nasr were out of the final segment.

Darkness had already fallen when Q3 got underway. Rosberg took provisional pole by two tenths of a second over his team-mate Rosberg. Perez continued his superb driving and took P3 on his first run. Kimi was 4th less than a tenth of a second off Force India´s Perez. Hamilton managed to improve his lap time on his second run but Rosberg came back at his team-mate and claimed pole by 0,377s over his team-mate! Very convincing work from Rosberg, who has clearly got his self-confidence back. Kimi also managed to improve on his second run and by way of  consolation for Ferrari, Kimi took third, narrowly beating the flying Force India of Perez. Ricciardo in his Red Bull qualified 5th, Williams´ Bottas 6th, Force India´s Hulkenberg 7th, Bottas´ team-mate Massa 8th, Red Bull´s Kvyat 9th and Toro Rosso´s Sainz 10th. What was quite shocking was that this was already the 15th front row lock-out for the Mercedes duo this season! That definitely tells all about Mercedes´ superiority this year!

Last night I had a dream that I got a chance to meet Sebastian Vettel briefly as he was attending a motor sport event in Finland. That is such a huge dream for me to meet the Ferrari duo one day! Such a shame that I have so little possibilities to make this dream come true! But luckily everyone is allowed to dream. Maybe it´s also the magical and fairytale-like Yas Marina Circuit that makes me so emotional... I hope it´ll be a magical race for my red-suited heroes! Forza Kimi! Forza Sebastian! Forza Ferrari!


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