Sebastien Vettel on pole for Formula 1 Shanghai Grand Prix 2011

Sebastien Vettel

It was an overcast run into the qualifying session of the 2011 Shanghai grand prix. Sebastien Vettel came on top in the practice sessions but for some reason, his teammate, Mark Webber struggled to post a decent time. Vettel continued his great form at Shanghai as well and grabbed pole for this weekends race while, Webber failed to reach the top ten.

The McLarens of Jenson Button and Lewis Hamilton will start from second and third position respectively. For the third time this season, both Ferrari’s failed to impress in the qualifying session. Alonso did manage a third best time but then was beaten by Rosberg followed by Hamilton. Thus, Alonso was pushed to fifth. Massa will start the race behind his teammate in sixth.

Both the Lotus Renaults looked good till Q2. The Russian even managed to post a second best time in the session while Heidfeld was in the pits. Unfortunately for Petrov, the car faced some technical issues just after setting his best time and had to retire. This brought out the red flag and with 2min 02 sec remaining in Q2, the drivers had to return to the pits. The restart looked more like a race than a qualifying session with all drivers trying to reach the start-finish line in time.

In the end, Heidfeld missed out on the opportunity and so did Massa who couldn’t pull out a clean lap. The surprise of the session was the pace shown by the Force India cars. Paul Di Resta was 8th while Sutil failed to make it into Q3 after setting impressive times in Q2.Narain Karthikeyan did qualify for the race but will start way back down the order in 24th place with Liuzzi in 23.

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