Turkish Grand Prix 2011: 2nd Qualifying session – Formula One highlights (Part 4)
The track was heating up as the remaining 17 looked to drive the wheels of their respective cars just to get a shot at the final qualifying session – And people argue Formula One isn’t as competitive as Nascar?
A blink of an eye was all it took between a chance to feature in the Top-10 fight for places, or being relegated. Any car unable to make the cut had to work twice as hard to salvage a point at the marathon Turkish Grand Prix – Who would make it?
Nico Rosberg started out his hot lap in fine fashion. The German looked firmly in control of his Mercedes GP and was shaping up nicely to improve on his lap time – Would he out-qualify his teammate Michael Schumacher again? Seeing the bigger picture, the prospect of seeing ‘both’ Mercedes GP’s in the third round of qualifying looked worrisome to the top running constructors.
Rosberg zoomed past the start finish line soon after and the timesheets were rearranged – From P10 to P2! He was on the soft compounds which gave a good measure of how quickly his car brought the rubber up to race temperature – Would it be too soon to expect a quick start at the race from the Mercedes?
Felipe Massa, shortly after, began his hot lap and went 7th fastest – With most of the potential candidates touted to reach the coveted third qualifying session, the Brazilian’s involvement in the final stint was still uncertain.
Force India sent out Adrian Sutil as a final roll of the dice to make it into Q3. However, after struggling with the car’s handling and suspension around a series of corners, the German driver failed to get through – missing the ‘promised land’ by around half a second.
The Q2 clock finally ran out. And as it stood, Sebastian Vettel advanced to the next stage in top position. The Red Bull was followed by Rosberg’s Mercedes. Lewis Hamilton took the third fastest time in his McLaren.
Barrichello, Sutil, Di Resta, Maldonado, Perez and Buemi failed to make it into the next round and were set to line up 11th through 16th for the race the following day. The highlight of Q2 certainly had to be Force India failing to get either drivers into the third qualifying session.
Stay tuned for Q3...
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