Rosberg dominates China qualifying

Nico Rosberg was the fastest driver in today’s Chinese Grand Prix qualifying and secured his first ever F1 pole position and also the first with the W03. The German driver had a commanding performance to place on the firts lane for tomorrow’s race.

After very promising practice sessions Mercedes confirmed its pace and Nico Rosberg was half a second faster than runner-up Lewis Hamilton. Although he finished third today, Michael Schumacher will join Rosberg on the first lane benefitting from Hamilton’s gearbox change penalty. The McLaren driver will drop to seven place.

Finishing down in 11th place Sebastian Vettel had yet another disastrous qualifying, with the Red Bull driver missing out on Q3.

As for the action during qualifying, Rosberg dominated a Mercedes one-two both on Q1 and Q2. In Q3 he completed an early lap with the time 1m35.121s which would become unbeatable. The confidence was such that he ended the session earlier and went to the weighting area as the remaining top ten drivers kept trying to beat his time.

Hamilton would in the mean time get between the Mercedes drivers, although he already knew he wouldn’t be able to keep his place on the grid. Thanks to his penalty Kamui Kobayashi climbed another position to na amazing third place on tomorrow’s grid. The Japanese drivers showed yet again the improvements on Sauber’s performance being the fourth fastest driver of the day.

The big shocker of the day was definitely Sebastian Vettel that didn’t make it to Q3. In his current form the double champion seemed far away from getting a fourth consecutive pole position in Shanghai, but no one would imagine that he would fail a top ten qualifying position for the first time since the 2009 Brazilian Grand Prix.

The German driver ran with a different exhaust system from the one used by his team-mate Mark Webber and although he was only 0.3 seconds slower than the Aussie on Q2. Still this difference would put him down to 11th place. Vettel was always on the bottom places of the top tem during Q2 and would kicked out of Q3 by Lotus’ Romain Grosjean. The German still tried to improve his time on his last flying lap, but he missed out on Q3.

Jenson Button and Mark Webber both had low-profile qualifying sessions, with the McLaren and Red Bull drivers finishing sixth and seventh respectively, behind Kimi Raikkonen.

The protagonists of the last race Fernando Alonso and Sergio Perez finished together in eighth and ningth position, while Romain Grosjean was tenth, opting not to drive on the last stint of the qualifying. Although Felipe Massa was closer to Alonso’s pace this time around the Brazilian didn’t manage to qualify into Q3 and finished 12th.

The rest of the pack organized itself by teams with the Williams of Pastor Maldonado and Bruno Senna in 13th and 14th, followed by the Force Indias, the Toro Rossos, the Caterhams, the Marussias and finally the HRTs.