McLaren, by contrast, had not managed a pole here since 1991 and never looked
likely to do so yesterday after Vettel topped morning practice. Jenson
Button was the quicker of the two McLarens, taking third on the grid, but he
was still a good four tenths off Vettel’s pace and drops five places anyway
due to an unscheduled change of gearbox.
“I think we expected them to be quick,” Button said of the Red Bulls. “Their
race pace in particular has been strong at the last few races. But I don’t
where those four tenths went.
“The balance for me felt great. I was happy with the car. I felt I got
everything out of it. But we were still a long way behind Red Bull, albeit a
long way ahead of the rest. I still think we can really race well from
eighth. There is an unusual group in front.”
He still starts ahead of Hamilton. The 2008 world champion, 52 points behind
Alonso in the standings after his retirement from the lead in Singapore, was
unfortunate that his final hot lap was disrupted by the presence of yellow
flags, which came out when Kimi Raikkonen’s Lotus spun at Spoon Curve. He
could only take ninth on the grid and was mystified afterwards.
“Today’s qualifying session was one of the most disappointing of my
year,” he said. “To be honest, I went the wrong way with the set-up and
ended up with too much understeer. Until quali, the car had felt great all
weekend, but I just couldn’t make it turn this afternoon, and as a result I
just couldn’t extract the best from it.
“Jenson showed that the car itself is quite good though – he did a great job
today – and our long-run pace wasn’t bad yesterday, either. So you never
know what’s going to happen in tomorrow’s race.”
At least he is not Michael Schumacher. Having announced his (second)
retirement on Thursday, and crashed in practice on Friday, the seven-time
champion could only go 13th quickest in his Mercedes, dropping down to 23rd
as a result of the 10-place grid penalty he copped in Singapore where he
crashed into the back of Toro Rosso’s Jean-Eric Vergne.
“It was a shame we couldn’t do more today after things hadn’t looked too bad
this morning,” Schumacher said, “but we simply didn’t get the performance
together. Knowing the high-speed characteristics of this circuit we didn’t
necessarily expect to be in good shape. But we saved a lot of tyre sets and
got the maximum out of the situation.”
Schumacher’s Mercedes team mate Nico Rosberg qualified even further back in
15th, a reminder, perhaps, of the challenge awaiting Hamilton at Brackley.
He has enough on his hands trying to salvage his final six races with
McLaren.