Turkish Grand Prix 2011: First qualifying session – Formula 1 highlights, part 5
Thanks to some brilliant driving from Felipe Massa, Heikki Kovalainen was eliminated from the session.
Less than two minutes remained as there was a collective struggle to avoid elimination.
Fernando Alonso was going smoothly in the second Ferrari and took 5th fastest. Interestingly, unlike his Brazilian teammate, the Spaniard was on a set of hard compound tyres which indicated that the Ferrari team handled the softer options better.
However, owing to the extra time needed for the primes to heat up, it still proved to be a strong run. The only question was; was it sustainable?
The session timer ran out as cars were still on their hot laps. Heikki Kovalainen looked to be on the limit to evade the relegation zone but failed to improve upon his time any further and stayed in the bottom seven. Adrian Sutil on the other hand, jumped
from 17th to 7th fastest, outperforming his teammate on a rare occasion with two more rounds still left of the pre-race day.
As things stood at the end of the first qualifying session, it was a Ferrari which headed the classifications. Felipe Massa’s blistering 1 minute 27.013 seconds was enough to seal the deal heading into Q2. The two Red Bulls with Sebastian Vettel leading
his teammate Mark Webber slotted in 2nd and 3rd respectively. Lewis Hamilton in McLaren took fourth fastest followed by Fernando Alonso in Ferrari. Jenson Button in the second MP4 – 26 took sixth. Adrian Sutil in Force India, Pastor Maldonado
in Williams, Vitaly Petrov in Renault and Nico Rosberg in Mercedes GP rounded off the top 10. Michael Schumacher qualified 13th and thereby made the cut for the next stage.
Interestingly, the top 15 drivers were separated by less than 0.9 of a second which goes on to show that even in a fight for the top 17, a second could be the difference of being able to go on further or being left behind.
Looking down the order, Heikki Kovalainen, Jarno Trulli, D’ Ambrosio, Tonio Liuzzi, Timo Glock, Narain Karthikeyan and Kamui Kobayashi were effectively eliminated. Since Kobayashi retired before managing to post a lap time, it was up to the stewards to decide
his fate for the race the following day with respect to the 107 percent rule.
Stay tuned for the highlights of the second qualifying session from Istanbul Park.
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