Mark Webber Takes Spanish GP Pole Position

After seeing the qualifying session of the Spanish Grand Prix, we can honestly say that it would take nothing short of a miracle for anybody to beat the Red Bulls on Sunday. Mark Webber scored his second pole position in the 2010 championship, leading another front-row domination for his team ahead of teammate Sebastian Vettel.

Webber dominated all qualifying sessions on Saturday, and grabbed pole position in the final stages of Q3, after Vettel had climbed to the top of the classification a few seconds earlier. The Aussie finished the Saturday running with the best time of 1.19.995 – the only driver to drop under 1 minute and 20 seconds – 0.106 seconds ahead of Vettel.

After running the majority of the qualifying session behind the two Red Bull drivers, Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button had to settle for sandwiching Ferrari’s Fernando Alonso, finishing on 3rd and 5th respectively. The three drivers were actually the only ones to finish Q3 within one second from pole sitter Webber, while more than 8 tenths of a second behind though.

Mercedes GP’s Michael Schumacher scored a great 6th place for the first surprise of the day, as the 7-time world champion topped teammate Nico Rosberg in qualifying for the first time this season. Rosberg had to settle for 8th overall, behind Renault’s Robert Kubica, but ahead of Ferrari’s Felipe Massa and Sauber’s Kamui Kobayashi.

The first driver to fail in making the Q3 was Force India’s Adrian Sutil, who scored the 11th best time of Q2, ahead of Sauber’s veteran Pedro de la Rosa, Williams’ Nico Hulkenberg, Renault’s Vitaly Petrov, Toro Rosso’s duo Sebastien Buemi and Jaime Alguersuari, and his own teammate Vitantonio Liuzzi.

The first shock of the day happened at the end of Q1, when Williams’ Rubens Barrichello failed to get past the first 20 minutes of action and had to settle for 18th place. Behind were the two Lotus cars of Jarno Trulli and Heikki Kovalainen, followed by Virgin duo Timo Glock and Lucas di Grassi and the two drivers from HRT F1 Karun Chandhok and Bruno Senna.

However, the grid positions will not remain the same for the race, as both Virgin drivers Timo Glock and Lucas di Grassi were handed 5-grid penalties for the Sunday action due to “procedural infringement of the rules by the team."

“Virgin failed to notify the FIA of the gearbox ratios they will use for the remainder of the weekend within the required two hours of the end of Friday practice, thus breaching the regulations and prompting the stewards' action,” said the Formula 1 website.

Additionally, Vitaly Petrov will also step 5 places behind due to a change of gearbox (following his crash in Saturday’s last practice session).