“Surprise Surprise!!” that is what would have been on the mind of Nico Hulkenberg after Saturday’s qualifying session. The Williams driver shocked the top runners with a splendid Q3 at Sao Paulo for the penultimate race of the season at Brazil. He not only clinched the pole position for the Sunday’s race from the likes of Vettel, Webber, Alonso and Hamilton but also left them far behind by more than a second.
Nico clocked a time of 1m 14.470s in his final lap of the qualifying session and moving up to the pole position. Red Bull’s Sebastian Vettel will start second from the grid after he clocked a time of 1m 15.519s. Mark Webber will start behind his team mate after he managed a best time of 1m 15.637s in Q3. Lewis Hamilton will share the grid alongside Mark Webber and thus start fourth from. The McLaren driver managed a time of 1m 15.747s, .242 seconds faster than the current championship leader Fernando Alonso who will be starting fifth on the grid. Nico’s team mate Rubens Barrichello will start sixth from the grid who managed a time of 1m 16.203s. Renault’s Robert Kubica will start seventh ahead of the seven time World Champion Michael Schumacher of Mercedes GP who clocked times of 1m 16.552s and 1m 16.925s respectively. Ferrari‘s Felipe Massa and Renault’s Vitaly Petrov rounded of the top ten with a timings of 1m 17.101s and 1m 17.656s respectively.
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The Q1 was supposed to be marred by heavy rains but that was not the case though the track did get wet but the situation got better to the later part of Q2 with the drivers moving on to the intermediates. They started the Q3 with the intermediates and then shifted to the dry weather tyres as expected.
The Q1 session was topped by Fernando Alonso while Mark Webber was at the top of the charts for Q2 session.
The reigning champion Jenson Button who was attacked after the qualifying session while returning from the track had earlier managed an eleventh position in the qualifying with a time of 1m 19.288s in the Q2. He will be followed by BMW’s Kobayashi and Mercedes GP’s Rosberg. Torro Rosso’s Alguersuari and Buemi were fourteenth and fifteenth respectively. Buemi will start nineteenth due the penalty he received in the Korean GP. Heidfeld of Sauber who was sixteenth will start fifteenth from the grid.
Force India’s Liuzzi who qualified seventeenth will start sixteenth while his team mate Adrian Sutil who qualified eighteenth will start twenty second. Virgin’s Timo Glock who qualified nineteenth will start seventeenth while his team mate Di Grassi who qualified twenty second will start from twenty first on the grid.
While the Lotus team will be placed on eighteenth and twentieth from the grid after Trulli and Kovalainen qualified twentieth and twenty first.
While the HRT Cosworth’s pair of Klien and Senna will start twenty third and twenty fourth respectively from the grid the same positions in which they qualified.
After an exciting Qualifying session in the Brazilian GP which saw a shock leader at pole position how will the race turn out to be??
