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Lewis Hamiltons dominance of the 2015 season could be under threat. The 30 year old British World Champion has had his unblemished start to the 2015 season broken by Nico Rosberg, his Mercedes teammate with the 16th pole position of his career. Lewis starts from 2nd, the 3rd front row lockout of the season for Mercedes but he is still finding positives as he says “the outside of the grid is cleaner” which may help him on the run to the first corner.
Throughout the practice sessions Lewis’ dominance was clearly under threat as he only managed a faster time than Nico during FP2. During qualifying he seemed ill at ease and after the session was quoted as saying, “It was quite tricky out there today, I did the best I could- but it wasn’t quite fast enough and Nico did a really good job”.
Lewis added, “It may not have been the greatest weekend so far but it’s not over yet- tomorrow is where it counts”.
Ferrari suffered a blow with Kimi Raikkonens poor performance. Much has been made of Kimi not receiving the same upgrades as Sebastian Vettel, but the team attempted to reassure us and quite probably Kimi, that there was nothing to be read into this and in Q1 and Q2 Kimi out performed Sebastian however when it came to the Q3 shootout he only managed 7th, 4 places behind his German teammate.
Valtteri Bottas drove his Mercedes powered Williams to 4th place, 5 ahead of Brazilian Felipe Massa over a second quicker than the only person he can have an exact comparison with. Massas gamble of one flying run did not pay off on this occasion.
Again the Torro Rosso team has outperformed Red Bull with excellent performances by the 2 rookie drivers. Carlos Sainz Jr drove superbly to 5th place on the grid in front of his home crowd beating his younger teammate Max Verstappen who finished 6th. For the former World Champion Constructors Red Bull, to have Daniil Kvyat in 8th and Daniel Ricciardo only finishing 10th it must be pretty uncomfortable in their boardroom right now.
Lotus sadly failed in their attempt to maintain Romain Grosjeans run of making it into Q3 and he only reached 11th but once again he was able to qualify higher that Pastor Maldonado in 12th. Maldonado was visibly skittish on track with the car looking very unsettled but after qualifying he seemed pleased with the result and is looking forward with aiming for a points finish tomorrow.
McLaren have taken a step in the right direction and now are starting tomorrows race clearly ahead of 3 teams on the grid. The promised upgrades that many fans of the legendary British team have been waiting for did not deliver quite what was expected and 13th for Fernando Alonso in front of his home crowd can only be a disappointment for them. For the first time this season in a session they both participated in Jenson Button failed to beat his teammate but was only 0.096 seconds and one place behind.
Sauber, after their superb and unexpected start to the season have slipped down the grid to 15th for Felipe Nasr and almost 0.5 seconds behind and 16th for Marcus Ericsson. Perhaps their budget restraints are now starting to show, not allowing the team the same level of in season development as their rivals, which could also be the problem for Force India whose 2 drivers finished 17th and 18th. The much-respected Nico Hulkenberg finished ahead of Sergio Perez by less than 0.1 seconds. As the Barcelona circuit is known for being an aero track the lack of development will be much more obvious than at the faster circuits such as Bahrain.
The grid for tomorrows race will be finished as usual with the 2 Manor cars of Will Stevens in 19th and Spaniard Roberto Merhi in last place. Both the Manor cars have achieved times more than 107% of the 1st place time but will be allowed to start to complete the grid for the 2015 Spanish Grand Prix. (RF)
Grand Prix of Belgium
G. Zhou
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