Alonso predicts Red Bull pole in Britain

Fernando Alonso expects Red Bull Racing to pick up where they left off at Silverstone last year by claiming pole position in tomorrow's qualifying session at Silverstone. With Mark Webber having set the final pace in Friday's second practice session, the Spaniard's Ferrari was able to separate the Red Bulls of the Australian and Germany's Sebastian Vettel.

As Webber set a leading lap time of 1:31.234, Alonso's best was just under fourth tenths inside it as third-placed Vettel was followed on the timesheets by the second Ferrari of Felipe Massa. However, Alonso does not believe he will be challenging Red Bull come Saturday.

“I expected to be competitive because our car is much better than it was at the Turkish Grand Prix, which was the last time we raced at a track with similar characteristics to this one,” said Fernando.

“As expected, Red Bull is very strong and therefore the big favourite for qualifying. We will fight it out behind them with McLaren, Renault and also maybe Mercedes.”

Massa was pleased with his car, which contains various additional parts in comparison with those of Valencia last time out. “I would say it's been a good day for us” he said.

“We tried out various new aerodynamic components and compared different configurations; by the end the car was pretty good, with a variety of different fuel levels and on both new and used tyres.”

Source: GP Update

Chinese GP - Vettel diaries - Saturday

Post-Qualifying Sebastian’s thoughts turn to team morale, the weather and the McLarens…

Practice was interesting this morning – I did think at one stage pole was out of our reach. But after another great Qualifying we’re again on the front row. OK, it was a bit tight, but it’s the result that counts. To be honest, we were pretty surprised to get both cars on the front row.

We had thought McLaren would be stronger and I don’t really know why they didn't do that well in the qualifying. The most important thing is that we were able to give all we had. Pole position can be a huge advantage, since it's the weather for tomorrow won't be as good as it was today. If it really rains and you're stuck in the middle of the field you can hardly see anything because of all the spray.

Of course, you can never tell how everything will go in the race. Spirits within the team - with the two cars in P1 ad P2 - is amazing. But the atmosphere in the team was always great, even before the win in Malaysia, when we had a few problems. When it comes to the reliability of the car, we’ve made a huge step forward. You shouldn't forget that the cars are built on their limits and things break once in a while - that's normal, even in the other teams.

But we’ll concentrate on tomorrow: if you spin during the race, no-one’s going to wait for you, everyone is looking out for themselves.

All that’s left for me to say is that we definitely have the best start position. Wish me luck!

Sebastian

Source: Red Bull

Vettel delighted with first pole of year

Sebastian Vettel was all smiles in Bahrain after becoming the first pole position winner of the 2010 Formula 1 season on Saturday. Having suffered a number of technical problems and lost crucial track time as a result in practice on Friday, the German admitted that the best place on the grid had not been expected.

With both he and team-mate Mark Webber having suffered a variety of problems in practice, with the Australian in particular as he was rooted to the garage for most of Friday's second session, Vettel was pleasantly surprised with the qualifying outcome.

"I'm very surprised," the German said. "In testing nobody really knew pace and then yesterday wasn't a great day. Qualifying went pretty smoothly, though, and I'm very, very happy to be on pole!

"Many thanks to the team; the boys haven't had much sleep over the last month but everyone has showed how strong they are and to be on pole is a nice feeling."

Source: GP Update