Like many people in this time zone and those further west we woke up with the qualifying session recorded to watch at a more hospitable time. When that recording was played it seemed like the very fabric of reality had imploded. It would be easy to forget that Saturdays are all about setting the grid for the race on the Sunday. While we did have that all important qualifying session this morning, the attention and pit-lane conversations were well and truly pointed elsewhere. In Thursdays preview I pointed out that Fernando Alonso would be linchpin in determining the driver movements between teams. Today the first dominoes began to fall into place when Sebastian Vettel decided to part company from Red Bull... which seems odd frankly. In most races it has been the second fastest car, although it is a little worse this weekend. So where is Mr Vettel going to go now, well the whole thing comes back to Alonso and Ferrari. While nothing has been confirmed officially, we can assume at this stage that Vettel is going to Ferrari and Alonso is going to McLaren Honda. The man who could lose out in all this is Jenson Button as there someone has to move to make room for Fernando.
There is also a hole left at Red Bull from Vettel's exit - news that will have pricked Vergne's ears up a bit. But after losing out to Ricciardo the first time round, he has lost out again as Daniil Kvyat is going to Red Bull next - putting the death stare near the front of the grid. So does this mean Vergne gets re-instated at Toro Rosso alongside Max Verstappen... well probably not as the the current line of thought is that Carlos Sainz Jnr will take the spot. It is really going against Vergne at the moment, with reliability challenges handing him a grid penalty tomorrow. It never rains but it pours sometimes... even more so for the race I suspect...
Qualifying
Underneath all the driver changes and transfers at the sharp end of the grid, there was actually a challenge for pole position to take care of as well. Not that too many people noticed, because it was ever so slightly underwhelming and inevitable. In comparison to previous qualifying sessions at Suzuka it was quite tame, but I get the impression that at this end of the season the teams have now got on top of the powertrain and thus the cars are much easier to drive, even a teenager can do it these days.
Q1 started with the local hero and international fan favourite Kamui Kobayashi taking to the circuit to very temporarily be the fastest car on track. But that naturally didn't last too long unfortunately - I think we'll have to wait to the events of tomorrow to hope for a miraculous performance in the monsoon rains. Of the front runners it was obviously the Mercedes team who flexed their collective muscles and virtually glided onto the front row... comfortably ahead of the nearest competitor. In the internal competition it was Hamilton who claimed a slim advantage of 0.06s - at this point the team pulled the cars in because their work was done.
The battle for relegation places was between Sauber and Lotus who were in a rut all of their own - a long way from the points, but safely ahead of Caterham and Marussia. For most of the session both teams had one car in relegation and one through to the next round - Gutierrez and Maldonado in the drop zone. After events in Bahrain it made sense for Esteban to want to put as many cars between himself and the mad Venezuelan. Of course another Renault failure means that Pastor has a 10 place grid penalty anyway. Gutierrez made it through into Q1 at the expense of Adrian Sutil, Sutil then managed to improve himself to knock Grosjean into relegation instead. Neither Maldonado or Grosjean could find any more pace in the Lotus and were knocked out. Even further back, Marcus Ericsson somehow managed to become qualifying champion of the bottom teams. The Swede managed to beat not only home legend Kamui but the dominant force in the division Jules Bianchi. But perhaps seeing the Ferrari seat go missing again might have displeased Jules slightly.
Q2
The second part of qualifying took a little while to get underway, I was able to go and make a toastie before anyone took to the track - even if it was a hastily prepared concoction. Eventually Valtteri Bottas departed the pit-lane and took to the track - only to see his time quickly obliterated by the Mercedes pairing. This time Rosberg was fastest, but the margin between the two was down to 0.03s this time. Bottas was 8 tenths further back...
At the point of relegation the times were a lot closer - two tenths separated 8th to 12th place, a group of cars which contained both Red Bulls, Toro Rossos and Perez. Raikkonen and Button weren't comfortably safe in front of this group. As the final runs got started only Daniil Kvyat was representing the Red Bull consortium in the top ten, but his position there was rather tenuous as lap-times began to tumble. Vettel and Ricciardo went first and jumped clear of the relegation zone and into the top ten, but as Button and Raikkonen improved Vettel found himself shuffled down into tenth place. A position that looked increasingly risky, but the driver in the best position to relegate the German bloke was Jean-Eric Vernge - the man the Red Bull enterprise has discarded like so many worthy contenders before. Perhaps a nice friendly gesture of not knocking Vettel out of Q2 might score him some loyalty points with the team... So Vettel progresses and Vergne scored and engine penalty... it's not fair sometimes.
Q3
Ten cars remaining, and only two of them could get pole position - and looking at the form from the previous sessions the top four positions were roughly decided before we started. In fact given we know that Red Bull's form has been poor by their standards their position was almost anchored to the opposite end of the top ten. Which meant that very little was left to decide in the remaining 12 minutes of qualifying. But maybe, just maybe a bizarre upset would take place - something to throw a metaphorical spanner in the works, or even a real spanner for that matter. In contrast to Q2, Valtteri Bottas was waiting at the end of the pit-lane even before the light turned green.
This time the difference between Bottas and the Mercedes drivers was slightly smaller - but remained a gaping chasm of defeat in comparison to some of the margins elsewhere on the grid. The Williams driver was only four tenths behind Hamilton, who in turn was a quarter of a second behind Rosberg after a slight lock-up at the Kobayashi hairpin. Valtteri made a similar mistake, so there was the potential for the Williams to inch ever close to Mercedes - but there was no real hope of stealing another position. Felipe Massa had remained completely anonymous all session, if it wasn't for the timing pane I'd never know he was there - but he was right behind Bottas in fourth place. Out of the final qualifiers only Raikkonen didn't partake in the opening runs after using more tyres in Q1.
Onto run two and could Rosberg retain control of his pole position only one race after Lewis retook the championship lead. Lewis did improve his time but Nico moved the goalposts a little further up the road and out of reach of Hamilton, not that it mattered because even Lewis' faster second lap was slower than Nico's initial performance. Bottas found a couple of extra tenths, but stayed third ahead of Massa. The ever cryptic Alonso brought the Ferrari home in 5th considerably ahead of Raikkonen who was down in 10th. The middle of the Ferrari sandwich was populated by the Red Bull and McLaren drivers headed by Magnussen in 6th.
The Bonus Points Championship Points Winners
Today may have been uneventful and predictable - at least in terms of qualifying anyhow... but points need to be delivered.
- 10pts - Marcus Ericsson - The slower driver for a team in strife at the moment, leads the lower division ahead of Bianchi and Kamui
- 8pts - Valtteri Bottas - The only driver keeping the Mercedes' roughly in sight, even if he is 6 tenths back
- 6pts - Nico Rosberg - Takes pole position away from Lewis and cancels out Hamilton's run of form
- 5pts - Fernando Alonso - Once again the driver carrying the flag for the Ferrari team...wonder if Vettel can do the same thing
- 4pts - Jean-Eric Vergne - Beats Kvyat, almost beats Vettel and still Red Bull fail to accept he exists... I wonder sometimes
- 3pts - Felipe Massa - Gets points for being one of the most anonymous drivers to qualify in the top five.
- 2pts - Daniel Ricciardo - On a track Vettel has been utterly dominant the Australian beats the German... no wonder Seb wants out
- 1pt - Suzuka - At times the track was the most entertaining feature of qualifying rather than those on it.
Looking to Tomorrow
This is quite literally the calm (and it was very calm, almost asleep at times) before the storm as Phanfone is on its way - due to make landfall on Monday. But the storm will be preceded by severe rain and wind - conditions that are predicted to descend on Sunday. A recipe for a seriously wet race, suggestions are afoot to move the race start time forward to get in front of the incoming storm, so that at least some laps are completed before it hits. There are threats of half-points being dished out and lots of safety car running, because dealing with the weather is horrifically inconsistent. In Canada 2011, the race wasn't restarted until it was dry enough for intermediates, yet in Japan 2007 the race was completed in full wet conditions - both were brilliant races. The battle between Kubica and Massa was astounding in Fuji - so more of that please tomorrow.
My fear is that the rain becomes so severe - a la Spa earlier on this year or Malaysia 2009 - the last half points race. A race in which Raikkonen gave up and went for some ice cream during the storm delay. But I doubt that even in the event of rainfall which is very likely - Mercedes will still dominate and score a 1-2, if they don't crash into each other amidst the puddles.
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