Schumacher was clearly disappointed to go over half a second slower than his
team mate, having outqualified Rosberg in Australia and Malaysia and then
set the pace in practice on Friday, but he was gracious in the press
conference afterwards.
“That was a phenomenal lap time for Nico,” he said. “He’s known as a good
qualifier and there’s no reason for me to be unhappy – in fact the opposite.
“It’s going to be the first time the Mercedes Silver Arrows have been on the
front row and it’s happening in China. I feel sorry for Lewis but it’s good
for us. There’s certainly a question mark over whether we can keep our
positions from qualifying but we’ll try our best.”
The Mercedes pair will be helped by the fact that the two cars behind them are
not considered to be championship contenders. Thanks to Hamilton’s penalty,
Sauber’s Kamui Kobayashi will start from third on the grid, with Lotus’ Kimi
Raikkonen alongside him for company.
Hamilton drops to seventh, but unbelievably still finds himself four places
above world champion Sebastian Vettel who failed to make it to the final top
10 shootout for the first time since Brazil 2009.
“I’m obviously not happy,” Vettel said. “I was pretty happy with my laps
in Q2 but we now have to start the race from P11.
“It makes it harder but not impossible to win the race. Yesterday I was happy
with the car and that’s why I started with the settings. But I’m not blaming
the car for the position, I was driving.”
Hamilton, too, was adamant that it was not impossible to win the race from
seventh. “It’s going to be tough, but I’m going to push as hard as I can,”
he said.
“But congratulations to Nico. It’s fantastic and I am proud of him. “We
grew up racing together and we dreamed of racing in F1. We were team-mates
in 2000 and friends before that.”
Despite starting the race a place behind his team mate Jenson Button, Hamilton
was the happier of the McLaren drivers. Button, as he did during Friday
practice, found it difficult to get his tyres up to temperature.
“When the temperature drops, it’s tough for me,” he admitted. “When it’s hot,
the car feels great.
“Q2 wasn’t that quick for me but I felt we could have been competitive in Q3.
I only had one set in Q3 so we waited so I could have a clean circuit, but
you could just feel the temperature dropping.
“The best time to be out was at the beginning. But it wasn’t too bad and we
can race from fifth. Kamui [Kobayashi] is just in front so that’s going to
be a lot of fun. Mercedes’ race pace is probably not as good as those behind
so that’ll be interesting. I think that the weather will be interesting even
if it doesn’t rain.”
Grid positions after qualifying:
1 Nico Rosberg (Ger) Mercedes GP 1min 35.121secs
2 Michael Schumacher (Ger) Mercedes GP 1:35.691
3 Kamui Kobayashi (Jpn) Sauber-Ferrari 1:35.784
4 Kimi Raikkonen (Fin) Lotus F1 Team 1:35.898
5 Jenson Button (Gbr) McLaren 1:36.191
6 Mark Webber (Aus) Red Bull 1:36.290
*7 Lewis Hamilton (Gbr) McLaren 1:35.6268
8 Sergio Perez (Mex) Sauber-Ferrari 1:36.524
9 Fernando Alonso (Spa) Ferrari 1:36.622
10 Romain Grosjean (Swi) Lotus F1 Team 1:35.903
11 Sebastian Vettel (Ger) Red Bull 1:36.031
12 Felipe Massa (Bra) Ferrari 1:36.255
13 Pastor Maldonado (Ven) Williams 1:36.283
14 Bruno Senna (Bra) Williams 1:36.289
15 Paul di Resta (Gbr) Force India 1:36.317
16 Nico Hulkenberg (Ger) Force India 1:36.745
17 Daniel Ricciardo (Aus) Scuderia Toro Rosso 1:36.956
18 Jean-Eric Vergne (Fra) Scuderia Toro Rosso 1:37.714
19 Heikki Kovalainen (Fin) Caterham 1:38.463
20 Vitaly Petrov (Rus) Caterham 1:38.677
21 Timo Glock (Ger) Marussia 1:39.282
22 Charles Pic (Fra) Marussia 1:39.717
23 Pedro de la Rosa (Spa) HRT-F1 1:40.411
24 Narain Karthikeyan (Ind) HRT-F1 1:41.000
* Lewis Hamilton incurred a five-place grid penalty due to gearbox
issues. He will start seventh on the grid.