Sebastian Vettel grabs pole at the European Grand Prix in Valencia!

Sebastien Vettel

Reigning Formula1 World Champion Sebastian Vettel of Redbull Renault Racing stormed to what is his 7th pole position in 8 qualifying sessions so far, this season at the European Grand Prix held at Valencia, Spain. Following Vettel was his team mate and fellow RedBull Renault Racing Driver, Mark Webber, who was followed by Mclaren’s Lewis Hamilton in third place. During the course of his pole position, Sebastian Vettel also set a new lap record at the Valencia F1 Circuit, with a timing of 1:36:975.

Overcoming a regulation change that the FIA enforced for this race, which mandated all teams to not alter their engine maps between the qualifying session and the actual race, Team RedBull Renault Racing still showed every other F1 car a clean pair of heels reinforcing the sheer pace of the RedBulls throughout this season. Following the top three were the Ferraris of Fernando Alonso and Felipe Mass while Jenson Button of Mclaren completed the top six.

Michael Schumacher and Nico Rosberg were feeling the heat of the qualifying session with the them opting for the premium soft tyres which meant that they had only two sets for qualifying even as Mark Webber suffered a scare as he went into Q2 by managing to qualify 17th fastest in Q3. In Q2 though it was a different story as Webber upped his pace significantly as the qualifying session was red flagged as the Williams Cosworth of Pastor Maldonado spun off and came to a rest in the middle of the track, just ahead of a corner.

As Michael Schumacher maintained all weekend that a fourth row qualifying for the Mercedes’ would be a good result and in line with that, Nico Rosberg managed 7th while Michael Schumacher finished 8th fastest. Force India’s Adrian Sutil finally out qualified Paul Di Resta to take 10th while the latter could manage 12th place. Narain Karthikeyan was also out qualified by his team mate Vitantonio Liuzzi, managing the last and the 24th place on the qualifying grid for Team Hispania Racing, thankfully within the 107% qualifying time.