Things always get a little crazy at Francorchamps

The qualifying session delivered a somewhat surprising result yesterday afternoon with Kamui Kobayashi taking second place, three-tenths behind Jenson Button. Added to this is Pastor Maldonado’s third position before his penalty.

« It’s Spa in general, we saw a Force India on pole position in 2009. Crazy things always happen here. It’s surprising to see Vettel out in Q2 and the Saubers well placed. It’s up to us to work well and get the best out of the race tomorrow. I believe the race will bring things back a little to how we know them, » comments Romain Grosjean.

In 2009, Force India indeed created a surprise with Giancarlo Fisichella’s pole position ahead of Jarno Trulli’s Toyota. During the race, Fisichella had to concede to Kimi Räikkönen, who had set the 6th-fastest qualifying time. The podium was then completed by Sebastian Vettel, who started from 8th place on the grid. Starting 10th today, the German can therefore still hope to achieve a good result in the Grand Prix.

Among the other surprising results in recent years, one can mention Heinz-Harald Frentzen’s 4th position on Saturday driving his Prost in 2001. In the race, he finished in a respectable 9th place after starting from the back of the grid due to a problem just before the start. The previous year, Trulli had secured a very impressive 2nd position with his Jordan but unfortunately had to retire the next day after 4 laps following a collision. A collision that must be avoided at the start this afternoon, with the La Source corner always being quite tricky to negotiate when the red lights go out.

And when it rains, it’s even worse. We remember the disaster of the 1998 edition during the first lap of the race which was won by Damon Hill ahead of his teammate Ralf Schumacher and Jean Alesi’s Sauber. Will Kamui Kobayashi do as well as the Frenchman did back then? We’ll have the answer around 3:30 PM.

From our correspondent in Spa-Francorchamps.