Well there we have it, the veil of secrecy that surrounds any new circuit has been cast aside as the Circuit of the Americas completed it's first qualifying session. From the the session this evening it can said that the track doesn't look that American - being composed of several elements from European circuits all jammed together to form something very interesting indeed. There were some notable differences from the simulated version used for the video earlier in the week - for example there is no crested breaking zone for the hairpin at the farthest end of the lap. Additionally the stadium section in the final sector is more disappointing than is seemed - the corners do come across as more irritating than the virtual version indicated. On the plus side the opening sector does look fantastic - the climb uphill to turn one is monolithic and the track widens so much at the apex you could race buses through there. The following section of corners does have some similarities to silverstone but this being America and all had been supersized with a few more corners and drenched in some rather patriotic looking tarmac.
One issue that came up through the driver's comments and general commentary was the general lack of grip there was offline - a likely consequence of the new track surface not being used before this weekend. Meaning that although there is a lot of space in the middle of the wider corner entrances the racing surface there will be too dusty and slippery to actually use for overtaking. The first practice session on Friday saw all kinds of powerslides and excursions off track - which unsurprisingly in this day and age does not contain too much grass or gravel - but acres of asphalt before reaching the barrier in places. You'd think with all these variables and a completely new venue presenting an unknown quantity for all concerned there might be a fluctuation in form, but no, the majority of the grid is a replica of Abu Dhabi give or take a couple of fluctuations where Red Bull and McLaren are out front followed by Lotus while Ferrari continue to struggle. So lets look at the first ever qualifying session from Austin Texas.
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| Image credit to F1Fanatic.co.uk |
Qualifying
The US GP has been held at 10 different venues since Sebring in the 60's the majority of the events have been held on street tracks - as New Jersey plans to be whenever it is deemed ready, so competing on a permanent facility is a little of a novelty of sorts. Faced with some conservative tyre choices from Pirelli the patten of the session would be to stay out on track continuously to build up heat and grip across the session. The HRT cars were the first to venture out onto the track, who throughout the practice sessions hadn't been fast enough to be in the 107% window to make the start. No wonder the team are looking for buyers for the next season, with brake issues and a general lack of pace. So here is a thought - if the supporters of blog HQ have a couple hundred million lying around blog HQ could make it onto the F1 grid in 2013 with a team of bright yellow blogmobiles. Back in the real world now the track was getting busier as several more drivers took to the circuit.
In the opening quarter of the session it was the Lotus of Raikkonen who lead - proving that two weeks on he still knew what he is doing - while the majority of the main runners hadn't left the garage. On account of the tyre selection being a little conservative teams were electing to change onto the medium compound tyres - which took Grosjean to the top ahead of the two Ferraris in second and third. Even by this stage there was no sign of that German bloke as Webber put his Red Bull up into second. The medium tyres pulled the Williams of Bruno Senna up to the top of the timesheets ahead of Grosjean and drew Di Resta into the top five. Vettel turned up and went third, fastest car on the harder tyre however.
But this opening session is all about who is going to get relegated, and it was no surprise to see it was a Torro Rosso sitting in that position ahead of the newer teams. However this situation changed when Ricciardo skipped out of relegation to drop Rosberg temporarily out of qualifying - but the Mercedes managed to reclaim the position - only just. The remaining laps of the session were compromised as Narain Karthikeyan's HRT broke down on the entrance to turn two bringing out the yellows and cementing the relegation places. One thing worth pointing out was that the entire Marussia team out-qualified Caterham which is a major anomaly.
Swiftly on to Q2 now and as with the first session Raikkonen set the early pace on his initial lap, ahead of Senna's Williams. This time Ferrari and McLaren went out earlier in the session and Button immediately put the car into second place behind Kimi. Fernando however was encountering difficulties caught up behind Schumacher on an out-lap - not the first time the Mercedes driver has been in the way of this season, not even this weekend causing difficulties for Hamilton in Friday practice. While Alonso was delayed the entire field was hit with a crushing blow of dominant normality from the German bloke - going fastest by a comfortable margin of 0.8s. The reverberating waves of power from Vettels lap must have carried themselves to McLaren disabling Jenson Button's throttle control and putting him out of the qualifying session. Increasing the amount of McLaren reliability problems costing them problems.
Because all the drivers needed to be out continuously throughout the session there was much less positional change throughout the field as the session wound itself closer to a conclusion. Felipe Massa was having a strong session in his half of the Ferrari garage, continually producing laps quicker than those of his championship contending team-mate. The stability of the grid at this stage helped Raikkonen who was very close to being relegated in tenth place, only tenths ahead of Bruno Senna just on the other side of the cut-off point. Senna tried to make it through but was unable to knock Kimi out of the final phase of qualifying. Having only just managed to escape Q1 Rosberg was cemented to last place in Q2, odd considering Schumacher was up in the top ten - but no-one was able to challenge the German Bloke out front.
With the remaining 10 drivers prepared for the final part of qualifying the competition for pole seemed to be a forgone conclusion - although that could have been said several races ago given the momentum Vettel and Red Bull have had recently. This time it was Schumacher who was the first onto the track only to set a very conservative time which was slower than any other timed lap of the whole session, even slower than HRT were in Q1. Both Ferraris followed the German out but neither of them completed a lap time worth writing home about - that left it to Romain Grosjean to set the first representative time to go fastest. But the Frenchman's time at the top was shortlived as first Webber and then Hamilton placed their cars at the front of the field.
After three quarters of the session had been completed only four reasonable lap times had been posted - none of which belonged to the all dominant Vettel but that was going to be changed, as the German bloke turned up and immediately went fastest. Hamilton came within quarter of a tenth of taking the provisional pole position away from the Red Bull driver, but what Lewis managed to do was split the two blue machines to prevent a front row lockout. On his subsequent run Sebastian moved the goal post a little further away from the McLaren driver, Hamilton tried to respond by the pole position belonged to Vettel once more. Lewis lines up second ahead of Webber in the Red bull, Grosjean qualified fourth but a gearbox penalty will put him 9th on the grid. Raikkonen assumes 4th place as a result starting alongside Schumacher's Mercedes. Massa starts 6th in the leading Ferrari with Hulkenberg in 7th place splitting the two red machines as Alonso starts 8th. Grosjean's penalty places him in 9th while the final place in the top ten goes to Pastor Maldonado.
The Bonus Points Championship points winners
From the inaugural qualifying from the extensive Circuit of the Americas the competition was understandably cautious as all the offline elements of the track are very slippery; it is time to release the first batch of points from the penultimate weekend of the season.
Because all the drivers needed to be out continuously throughout the session there was much less positional change throughout the field as the session wound itself closer to a conclusion. Felipe Massa was having a strong session in his half of the Ferrari garage, continually producing laps quicker than those of his championship contending team-mate. The stability of the grid at this stage helped Raikkonen who was very close to being relegated in tenth place, only tenths ahead of Bruno Senna just on the other side of the cut-off point. Senna tried to make it through but was unable to knock Kimi out of the final phase of qualifying. Having only just managed to escape Q1 Rosberg was cemented to last place in Q2, odd considering Schumacher was up in the top ten - but no-one was able to challenge the German Bloke out front.
With the remaining 10 drivers prepared for the final part of qualifying the competition for pole seemed to be a forgone conclusion - although that could have been said several races ago given the momentum Vettel and Red Bull have had recently. This time it was Schumacher who was the first onto the track only to set a very conservative time which was slower than any other timed lap of the whole session, even slower than HRT were in Q1. Both Ferraris followed the German out but neither of them completed a lap time worth writing home about - that left it to Romain Grosjean to set the first representative time to go fastest. But the Frenchman's time at the top was shortlived as first Webber and then Hamilton placed their cars at the front of the field.
After three quarters of the session had been completed only four reasonable lap times had been posted - none of which belonged to the all dominant Vettel but that was going to be changed, as the German bloke turned up and immediately went fastest. Hamilton came within quarter of a tenth of taking the provisional pole position away from the Red Bull driver, but what Lewis managed to do was split the two blue machines to prevent a front row lockout. On his subsequent run Sebastian moved the goal post a little further away from the McLaren driver, Hamilton tried to respond by the pole position belonged to Vettel once more. Lewis lines up second ahead of Webber in the Red bull, Grosjean qualified fourth but a gearbox penalty will put him 9th on the grid. Raikkonen assumes 4th place as a result starting alongside Schumacher's Mercedes. Massa starts 6th in the leading Ferrari with Hulkenberg in 7th place splitting the two red machines as Alonso starts 8th. Grosjean's penalty places him in 9th while the final place in the top ten goes to Pastor Maldonado.
The Bonus Points Championship points winners
From the inaugural qualifying from the extensive Circuit of the Americas the competition was understandably cautious as all the offline elements of the track are very slippery; it is time to release the first batch of points from the penultimate weekend of the season.
- 10pts - Michael Schumacher - for managing to drag the Mercedes up into 5th while Rosberg can only manage 17th place
- 8pts - Timo Glock - for out qualifying both Caterham drivers to take the lead of the bottom division of the grid
- 6pts - Charles Pic - for also being able to defeat both of the Caterham drivers to help both Marussias lead the division.
- 5pts - Romain Grosjean - a strong performance despite having a grid position compromised by a technical penalty
- 4pts - Felipe Massa - For defeating his team-mate across virtually all of qualifying
- 3pts - Lewis Hamilton - For coming close to cancelling out the Vettel domination today
- 2pts - Vitaly Petrov - For beating Heikki Kovalainen in the Caterham team
- 1pt - Vettel - Fine you can have a point for that.
Looking to tomorrow
Well it has been a long time since we've been racing in the US, and even then that was at the rather unimpressive infield version of the Indianapolis track. However I don't think in the opening year the racing will be all that impressive tomorrow either, because the track is too slippery and dusty offline to risk making any significant overtaking without a major speed advantage. We saw Grosjean get a little wide in the penultimate corner and had absolutely no grip in the final corner because of the lack of running that has happened offline. So this will foreseeably cause a problem throughout the race, possibly even in the DRS zone down the back straight - which might not be calibrated correctly for the opening event at the track.
What will be worth looking out for is the very start of the race, because the grid has a very definable dirty and clean split from one side of the grid to the other, all drivers on even grid slots will likely be very compromised if the drivers are to be believed. Some likening the dirty side to starting the car in the wet such is the lack of grip there, and even when they do get off the grid there is the small matter of the massive mountain of tarmac that leads into turn one. The only remote comparison is turn two at the formerly used A1 ring in Austria, but even that wasn't as steep or as tight. Giving the drivers a massive amount of space, most of it very slippery on the side of a very steep climb at the start of the race can cause all kinds of mayhem. So I don't expect the entire field to get through that without at least some wing damage and possibly some punctures in the process. The remainder of the race may not be up to too much especially with the conservatively hard tyres minimising degradation, but mistakes may be forthcoming by virtue of running ever so slightly wide in the faster corners of the lap. So until tomorrow this is farewell from the blog, when we will find out who are the final contenders for the all important bonus points championship.
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