It was a bad at work for Lewis Hamilton. While his teammate Jenson Button was finding it difficult to go fast, Hamilton went fastest and set the pole position time but his car could not make it back to the pits and therefore not enough fuel in it to test the fuel sample as mandated by the F1 laws. This meant that Hamilton was stripped of his provisional pole position and will now have to start from the back of the grid. The biggest beneficiaries of this development are Pastor Maldonado and his Williams team. Maldonado is now officially the pole sitter, something that the resurgent Williams team requires to demonstrate that after a dismal season in 2011 they are beginning their climb back to the top. But it was not all hunky dory at Williams with Bruno Senna not making into Q2.
Ferrari finally seemed to have found some genuine pace, at least in the hands of Fernando Alonso who actually set the third fastest time but thanks to Hamilton’s demotion will now find himself starting from the front row of the grid. The Mercedes duo of Nico Rosberg and Michael Schumacher decided to conserve their tyres and did not set lap times in Q3 and will therefore start from 6th and 8th on the grid. Jenson Button comes into 10th place thanks to his teammate who has gone from the top to the bottom. Pirelli’s tyres that fall apart very quickly and artificial aids like DRS may have reduced F1 racing to a farce, in the sense that less is now dependent on drivers and maybe even the cars when it comes to winning or losing races. But F1 has stopped being processional so perhaps one need not complain about the artificial measures brought into induce some changes in the procession.