Red Bull’s boss says ‘Pole Position not as important in Qualifying round’ – Formula 1
Formula 1 Red Bull Racing team’s boss, Christian Horner, said that a pole position is not as important in the qualifying round since overtaking aids and pit stop strategy during the race seems to be more beneficial for finishing at a good position.
He also mentioned that a pole position in the qualifying round will no longer be the key to winning at certain race circuits because those circuits have difficult corners.
With regard to the recent Chinese Grand Prix, Red Bull driver, Mark Webber, was unable to make his pole position out of the first round of qualifying session but he raced from eighteenth to third in the Sunday race. Webber admitted that, he was helped by
a combination of new tyres during the race. He used soft set of tyres that supported him in the race and as a result, he finished at the third podium place for his team.
Horner has praised Webber’s superb performance and appreciated his pit stop strategy during his China race.
The boss added, "It makes you question the value of qualifying. Now the cars can overtake and with such a big difference between old and new tyres, we are going to have to reassess at each track how important it is to get to the front of the grid. Our strategists
will look at how we should be structuring our race weekends".
In first three events of this season, the Australian, Malaysian and Chinese Grand Prix, each driver had three sets of hard tyres and three sets of soft tyres for both, the race and the qualifying round. However, during most of the races in the 2010 season,
top runners used all three sets of soft tyres in their qualifying round and stopped once for a set of hard tyres in the last set of the race.
The degradation of Pirelli tyres is mostly compared to last season’s issues with tyres. However, Horner believes that in light of this issue, Formula 1 drivers can improve by saving new sets of soft tyres for their races, this season, even though it compromises
their pole positions.
He said, “According to the characteristics of the track and the tyres at any given weekend, you might want to tilt the whole thing in favour of having fast, new tyres at key parts of the race, maybe at the expense of qualifying”.
He further added that drivers have to work hard to overtake top runners in the race contrary to Webber’s run in his China race that showed ‘it is possible’. Moreover, he praised Sebastian Vettel’s run and his conventional strategy.
All Formula 1 drivers are still busy, struggling for their season’s fourth race, taking place on May 8, 2011, in Turkey.
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