Saturday, 29 June 2013

British Grand Prix Preview


Lewis Hamilton in the Mercedes grabbed pole position for the 2013 British grand prix at Silverstone . This was after he was unhappy with his car after a rain hit Friday practice session. His mechanics have surely worked very hard on the car after that to keep the crowd favourite happy in his home grand prix.

Coming in at a not so close second was teammate Nico Rosberg who was beaten by Lewis by a whopping 0.452 second margin. How often do we get to see that big a margin between the leader and the rest of the field?

The two Red Bulls - Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber took the third and fourth positions respectively, on the grid.

In what was a good day for Force India , Paul Di Resta took the fifth spot , his career best qualifying position so far , which would have made him happy ,more so after failing to make it past Q1 in the past two races .Adrian Sutil brought the other Force India home at seventh.

 The Toro Rosso of Daniel Ricciardo came in at sixth , equaling his best , probably motivated by the prospect of replacing Mark Webber behind the steering wheel of the Red Bull next season.  His teammate Jean Eric Vergne , who is also vying for the Australian veteran’s vacancy , failed to make it to Q3 ,running wide on his final lap in Q2 and will be starting from thirteenth on the grid .

The two Lotuses of  Romain Grosjean and Kimi Raikkonen , the third contender for the Red Bull seat , set the eigth and ninth fastest times in Q3 and Fernando Alonso of Ferrari rounded up the top ten.

This meant that neither of the Mclarens or the Ferrari of Felipe Massa could make it to Q3.

Button who lost out on the final qualification round because of Kimi Raikkonen who just made the cut at the last moment , sending Button into the knockout zone and eleventh place on the grid.

With the mercedes’ lapping much faster than the other cars it will be interesting to see if either of the Red Bulls will be able to clinch victory here , but it doesn’t look like the Red Bulls or Mercedes’ will face too much of a challenge from any one else , especially with Raikkonen and Alonso struggling for pace . But who knows ? Especially with both of them gunning for the title too, they will be even more determined to prevent Vettel from increasing his lead over them.

We must keep an eye out for Toro Rosso though, as they looked very good during the qualifiers and will almost certainly end up in the points this weekend.

But being a Force India fan I will be looking out for Paul Di Resta. He looked very impressive in the qualifying session and even in the past two races , in which he finished seventh and ninth after starting from seventeenth in both races and now that he is starting in fifth , his dreams of making a podium finish seem a little more realistic and he would definitely be looking to improve upon his performance in Silverstone last year where he was forced to retire in the second lap due to a tyre failure.

Will it be the Red Bulls?  Or the mercedes’ ? Or will we see a fight back from the Ferraris and the Lotuses? Are the Toro Rossos capable of springing a surprise?

And will Paul Di Resta get that elusive podium finish?

Who knows? Let’s watch to find out!!

 -AkV

No comments:

Post a Comment