Luckily qualifying turned out dry, as almost two entire practice sessions had been missed due to dense fog in the circuit area. Tyre wise Q1 was interesting. Where everyone else opted for supersoft tyres, the Ferrari drivers used softs. In spite of the tyre choice it was Sebastian at the wheel of his Gina, who went fastest in the first session. In terms of pace, Mercedes and Ferrari seemed once again quite evenly matched. Red Bull´s Verstappen, on the other hand, was struggling with an engine software problem and was unable to do better than P19! Neither Ricciardo was able to match the top two teams´ pace but was already a second off Sebastian´s pace. There has been a lot of talk about the Williams rookie Lance Stroll, who has had difficulties to keep his FW38 on track. This time Stroll put together an impressive lap, lapping his Williams fifth fastest. There was drama at the closing stage of Q1, as Pascal Wehrlein stand-in Antonio Giovinazzi spun and heavily damaged his Sauber against the wall. The fallers in Q1 were McLaren´s Vandoorne, Haas´ Grosjean, Renault´s Palmer, above-mentioned Verstappen and Force India´s Ocon.
Q2 was delayed by 10 minutes, as the walls were repaired after Giovinazzi´s crash. Everyone came out on the supersofts, and once again Sebastian stamped Ferrari´s authority on Q2. It was extremely close between the silver cars and the Scuderia, as Hamilton was only 15 thousandths of a second off the German. In spite of the competitive first runs, the Ferrari duo opted for a second run at the end of the session. This time it was Kimi´s turn to shine, as the Iceman went fastest, with a 2-tenth gap to his teammate. Renault´s Hulkenberg caught my eye this time; the German lapped his Renault sixth fastest in the second session. Toro Rosso´s Kvyat has had a good start to this season -after disappointing 2016 season- and made it to Q3; whereas teammate Sainz was unable to pull through. Renault´s Magnussen, McLaren´s Alonso and Sauber´s Ericsson were also eliminated from the decisive last session.
Q3 was absolutely thrilling. Hamilton took provisional pole in spite of a big slide in the second sector. Kimi, too made a mistake in the first sector and was seven tenths down on Hamilton. Hamilton managed to improve his lap time on the second run. Sebastian extracted the maximum out of his SF70H but was still almost two tenths off pole-setter Hamilton, who claimed his 63rd career pole. However, there was only a thousandth of a second separating Sebastian and Mercedes´Valtteri Bottas! It equals 5.9 cm on track! However, I was utterly happy to see Sebastian splitting the silver cars. Teammate Kimi -after shining in Q2- was complaining of poor rear-end grip and asking whether his previous settings had been changed. The Iceman had to be content with fourth, almost half a second down on Hamilton. Ricciardo in his RB13 was fifth, and Massa pushed his Williams into sixth. Renault´s Hulkenberg was 7th, Force India´s Perez was 8th, Toro Rosso´s Kvyat was 9th and Williams´ Stroll rounded out the top ten.
With almost 100 % certainty tomorrow is going to be a wet race. Extreme conditions might make the race a lottery. One thing is for sure though: most likely we´re going to see a staggering overtaking show by Max Verstappen! The Dutchman will start from P17 (both Grosjean and Palmer have been dropped to the back of the grid due to ignoring yellow flags in Q1), but wet conditions won´t stop the hungry Dutchman from overtaking. Like we saw in Brazil last year, Verstappen shines in difficult conditions, as he has the courage to make bold overtaking moves. But how will the fight at the very top turn out? Hopefully Sebastian will be able to overtake Hamilton already at the start. But the harder the conditions are, the more of an importance it is to keep your car on track. The wetter it is, the higher the chance is to end up crashing out... I´m definitely looking forward to a hair-raising race and a red podium!
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