Sebastian Vettel's pole here in India, is his 13th of the season and means that he has tied Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost for the most pole positions in a season. Vettel needs one more to equal Nigel Mansell's feat of 14 poles (1992). This is also Red Bull's 16th pole of the season, a new team record.
Despite being the second quickest time, Hamilton will start in fifth on grid after his three place grid penalty, meaning that Mark Webber will start on the front row from Fernando Alonso, Jenson Button and Felipe Massa (who, by the way, spectacularly crashed out in the final minutes of Q3).
India has proven to be quite a dusty country and with visibility being quoted at less than a mile, many fans are concerned that their favourite driver may not have a good enough time. What the drivers and teams are concerned about is the idea that if during running time the car in front goes off the track, the driver coming up behind has a moment of near blindness as they pass through the dust cloud.
The world has experienced enough loss and tragedy within the motorsport industry in the last few weeks, it would be terrible to think what could happen during the race when you have five or six cars battling for position and one goes off road and kicks up the dust.
Q1 started and within immediately cars started leaving the pit lane hoping to have clean air to post some good times. The majority of the drivers on track where hoping to conserve the softer Pirelli's (and test circuit grip) and started Q1 on the harder compound. What most of the fans could hear that the Buddh International Circuit was proving to be quite a struggle for the drivers to get their tyres up to temperature.
Q2 was quite a bit different. As all the drivers learnt in Q1 that the soft tyres where in order for the day, teams had to calculate the risk of sending their driver's out too early against the fact that each car only had three sets of the compound for qualifying.
What seemed most enjoyable on Q2 was that in the last few seconds of the times rolling in, each driver that crossed the finish line ended up in 12th. It seems strange to notice something like that, but starting with Bruno Senna, giving position to Pastor Maldonado, who gave up the position to Paul di Resta who finally was over taken for 12th position by Michael Schumacher. It just seemed laughable at such an early time here in Canada to hear that four different drivers were said to have claimed 12th position.
Q3 started and Hamilton lead the drivers out to track knowing that he had to make good time as he would be starting back three places from his final position. As seeming to become the norm, not all 10 drivers set time during Q3. At least India allowed the fans to see seven of ten during the final shoot out.
All in all, Q3 gave us the expected battle for pole and once again delivered the come to expected result, Vettel producing an impressive 1:26.218 to beat out Hamilton and Webber. Alonso will be handed third on the grid (following Hamilton's penalty for ignoring yellow flags in practice). Massa will not be so happy after smashing his front suspension on the kerbing on turn 8 with only seconds of the session remaining, his Ferrari careering across the track before crashing into the barriers.
HRT seems to be delighted to have beaten both Virgins, home country favourite, Narain Karthikeyan only 0.22 seconds behind team-mate Daniel Ricciardo, (who will start from the back of the grid after dropping five places for a late gearbox change).
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