On such a low-grip surface and low-energy corners, even the ultra-soft compound took an age to turn on.
#F1 2017 monaco qualifying full
It invariably needed two preparation laps to get some sort of balance between the front and rear tyre temperatures – and those laps needed to be at a crawling pace (generally 6sec slower than the single full lap of the Ferrari) in order to bring the fronts up to temperature without the rears overheating. Seb said all the right things about it – but through barely concealed gritted teeth.īut if there was a lap better than Räikkönen’s it was almost certainly that of Valtteri Bottas, third quickest, a couple of thousandths shy of the front row, in a Mercedes that was a vastly more difficult proposition than the Ferrari, requiring a much more intricate preparation to the lap and considerably more manhandling.
With the value of pole so crucial around this place and with his title rival Hamilton only 14 th fastest, this was sort of an inconvenient time for Kimi to rediscover his mojo. In this way was a new record set for the interval between poles – eight years, 129 Grands Prix.Īs would be expected, Vettel looked less than delighted at his team-mate’s achievement.
On Saturday afternoon, in a sweet-handling SF70H, Räikkönen was simply slightly faster than Vettel. That’s where the bulk of his advantage over Vettel came from, and it even led Seb to over-strive there on both his Q3 runs. It’s a style that works to particularly devastating effect through a sequence of bends like Monaco’s sector two – quick sweeps but with no margin for error. Through the practices he trailed Vettel, sometimes by a significant amount, but after tweaking away with race engineer Dave Greenwood and his guys into Q1 the feeling was there and Räikkönen was transported back to the 2005 McLaren, back when no one could live with him. But at Monaco it all came together finally for Kimi. Vettel’s not shy of using steering to make the car do what he wishes, he doesn’t rely so much on delicate weight transfer at the crucial part of the corner to generate the rotation. It’s a style that requires a very amenable car and even though this year’s Ferrari has the widest operating band of all them, he’s struggled so far this year to get it working consistently the way he likes it. Räikkönen’s pole lap was a thing of beauty, like a 12-year rewind back to when the car gave him all the messages he needed to instinctively do his thing: just the smallest angle of steering giving him the quick, progressive rotation into the corner and then the beautiful precision of throttle movement against grip. What else is he contractually bound to? Qualifying After the podium, he walked to give stony-faced answers to the grid interviews and from there to the press conference, as he is contractually required to do. But whichever of them is the accurate one, Räikkönen felt a man wronged.
There are a few nuances to how it happened that open up different interpretations to be put upon Vettel’s victory on a day where his likely title rival Lewis Hamilton could do no better than seventh in a Mercedes that had proved incredibly difficult all weekend. But if there was such a plan, it seems no one had informed Räikkönen of it. It’s something it’s perfectly entitled to do, and with a world championship to try to win it was the logical action, albeit a deeply unpopular one with the watching world.
#F1 2017 monaco qualifying driver
It all fitted with the pre-race speculation that Ferrari, with the ‘wrong’ driver on pole, would find a way around the pitstops to do the switch. Räikkönen, the pole position man and early race leader, called in by his team five laps earlier than Vettel on a day where it was always the overcut that was going to work – and not the undercut – was monstrously hacked off. Sign-up now for access to a limited number of articles.
0 kommentar(er)
