Sebastian Vettel said that he completely owes the pole position he secured today in Bahrain to his hardworking Red Bull team who have worked extremely hard on the car since their disappointing start to the season.
The two Mercedes drivers had constrasting qualifying sessions today in Bahrain: Nico Rosberg had a comfortable ride to fifth place on the grid whilst Michael Schumacher was knocked out of the session at the end of Q1.
Sebastian Vettel of Red Bull takes pole position for the Bahrain Grand Prix with a time of 1:32.422
Caterham are celebrating an excellent qualifying session today in Bahrain after Heikki Kovalainen beat Michael Schumacher to get into Q2.
Sergio Perez said that he was ‘very happy’ with his qualifying session today in Bahrain as he put his Sauber in a better-than-expected eighth place.
After choosing to withdraw from FP2 yesterday and losing considerable preparation time, Force India were pleased with the tenth and thirteenth positions claimed by Paul di Resta and Nico Hulkenberg during qualifying today in Bahrain.
For the first time this season, HRT have managed to qualify a car higher than the back row of the grid as Pedro de la Rosa took P22 today in Bahrain. The team used the fact that they out-qualified Marussia driver Timo Glock as further evidence of their steadily improving performance.
Sebastian Vettel gave fans a reminder of how things were last season by taking a convincing pole position in Bahrain. The German, who has struggled in qualifying so far this season, put in a strong lap in the closing stages of today’s qualifying session at the Sakhir Circuit.
Nico Rosberg of Mercedes was fastest in the final Free Practice session of the weekend in Bahrain, with a lap of 1:33.254.
Force India chose not to run in the second Free Practice session today in Bahrain so that they could leave the Sakhir Circuit before darkness fell in the troubled Gulf state.
Nico Rosberg of Mercedes was fastest during Friday practice today in Bahrain, topping the timesheets in the second of the two 90-minute sessions. Lewis Hamilton of McLaren was the fastest driver in the opening session.
The indecision finally ended on Friday as the FIA released a statement confirming that the Bahrain Grand Prix will go ahead as scheduled, and so this weekend the entire F1 community – teams, drivers, media, and possibly even a few fans – will head to the Gulf state preoccupied with troubles far less trivial than a motor race.
Nico Rosberg said that his first win in Formula 1, which came today in Shanghai – his 111th race, ‘really is fantastic’, and was made particularly special by the fact that it was the first victory for his Mercedes team in the modern era of F1.
Marussia are leaving China in a positive mood this evening after picking up a third consecutive two-car finish in as many races and sitting pretty above Caterham and HRT in the constructors’ championship.
Ferrari picked up just two points in Shanghai today after Fernando Alonso could finish only ninth at the Chinese Grand Prix and Felipe Massa once again failed to finish inside the top ten.
Kimi Raikkonen was within ten laps of a podium finish today in Shanghai before the wear on his last set of Pirelli tyres became so great that he lost ten places over the course of a couple of laps and finished down in fourteenth place.
Jenson Button was left to wonder what might have been today in China after a problem in his third and final pit stop prevented him from hunting down Nico Rosberg and challenge for victory in Shanghai.
