Vettel Digs Deep, RBR Dig Out KERS.

By Charles Oladeji.

Red Bull Racing (RBR) admittedly took the KERS route during the Malaysian Qualifying Session in order to successfully snatch pole position from a determined McLaren team who’d ‘thrown down the gauntlet’ during the preceding practice sessions.  The decision by Red Bull to finally use KERS after admitting that they hadn’t bothered with it during the Australian GP Qualifying Session must surely have been deemed necessary as the Woking Team began setting the pace prior to, and during Q2 and Q3.

Sebastian Vettel is once again on pole, but, not with the type of time margin and pace security many expected.  An easy pole without KERS was anticipated based on the evidence of his blistering pacesetting pole position a fortnight ago at Albert Park during the first Grand Prix of the 2011 season.  On this occasion at Sepang, Vettel had to dig deep and snatch pole of Lewis Hamilton who looked to have secured pole momentarily with a lap time of 1:35.000. 

Lap times reached fever pitch with both Hamilton and Vettel pushing the limit, thus, relegating their experienced McLaren and Red Bull team mates to the second row of the grid.   Hamilton pushed his MP4-26 to a pole sitting time of 1:34.974 before he was knocked back in to second place by Vettel with a lap time of pure grit, coming in at 1/10^th of a second faster with an unbeatable time of 1:34.870.

Prior to Q3, Red Bull had appeared to be struggling to keep up the pace in Q2, with both Red Bull Drivers qualifying out of the top five. In particular, Mark Webber qualifying below the top ten was confusing; prompting some commentators to suspect RBR was unwilling to lay it all on the line till the final shoot out, having observed the pace of McLaren.

Vettel and Webber who will occupy 1^st and 3^rd on the grid respectively on Sunday have yet again delivered highly competitive pole sitting positions that could see either of them win the Malaysian GP for Red Bull Racing for a second time in a row.

On the other hand, McLaren seems to be picking up pace and getting their car set up right. The Woking team are getting better as each round comes along, albeit being very early into the season.  

Nonetheless, Martin Whitmarsh, Lewis Hamilton, Jenson Button and their technical team continue to demonstrate a level of professionalism under pressure. Despite the earlier technical glitches accompanied by adverse media coverage,  the Brits have definitely moved closer to Christian Horner and Adrian Newey’s RBR in the technical arms race, in a way many had expected Fernando Alonso and the 150^th Italia Scuderia Ferrari to do. 

McLaren's Jenson Button who claims to have a fondness of Sepang International cCrcuit having won there in 2009, will be outside of Mark Webber on the grid in 4^th, while Scuderia Ferrari’s top dog Alonso will be right behind them in 5^th.