Yeongam: Red Bull’s Sebastian Vettel maintained his dominance by claiming pole position for the Korean Grand Prix, pipping Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton on Saturday.
Vettel has now taken pole for three straight races and is aiming for a fourth successive win. He’s also chasing a hat trick of wins at the Yeongam circuit, and most importantly, a fourth consecutive F1 championship.
Vettel’s Red Bull team-mate Mark Webber was third fastest in qualifying for Sunday’s grand prix but a 10-place grid penalty from the previous race in Singapore relegates him to a lowly 13th. In-form Romain Grosjean of Lotus was fourth fastest , ahead of Hamilton’s team-mate Nico Rosberg. Meanwhile, Fernando Alonso qualified only fifth for Ferrari.
Sebastian Vettel said, “It was close today. I had a very good lap in Q3 on my first attempt and thought I would find it hard to do better. On my second attempt I caught Kimi on the warm up lap and didn’t have time to drop back, but fortunately the first lap was good enough. Mercedes were strong and seem to be comfortable in the middle sector. We’re good in Sector one this year which a surprise as that’s mostly straights. We improved the car from yesterday as I wasn’t entirely happy with it after the second practice. In terms of conditions, we should be okay if it’s dry or wet tomorrow; it’s not clear if we get some rain from the typhoon, but let’s see what happens.”
Meanwhile, Mark Webber said, “We had to take a bit of pace out of the car for qualifying, not much, but it was about how we would compromise between qualifying and the race tomorrow. I’m pretty happy, I could be two positions further up but that would mean, with the penalty, I would be 11th rather than 13th. It was a pretty tight qualifying with the two Mercedes, Seb and myself. Tomorrow’s race will be interesting, I will be out of position, but we’ll fight and come back through. I think we improved the car in some areas from yesterday.”