Saturday: Red Bull breaks the record for most pole positions in a single season
By securing his thirteenth pole position of the season, the sixteenth for Red Bull, Sebastian Vettel enabled his team to hold the record for the most pole positions in a single season, previously held by McLaren with 15 pole positions achieved in 1988 by the formidable duo of Prost/Senna. Thanks to the penalty imposed on Lewis Hamilton, Mark Webber, who qualified in 3rd position, will eventually start on the front row alongside his teammate.
Sebastian Vettel – 1st and Pole Position:
« It was an interesting qualifying session – a new circuit and a new challenge – obviously, I am very happy to be on the front row. I don’t know if being on the left or right side of the track – we are on the left side – is really an advantage or not, there isn’t one side that seems cleaner than the other, as we tend to drive in the middle.
It was a good fight and after the first stint it was very close, so I knew I had to do a bit better on the second. We decided to do only one lap each time, it was always a bit slippery, but overall, I’m very happy.
Tomorrow, it will be a long race and we will start from the best possible position, so we’ll see what happens.
Mark Webber – 3rd and 3rd:
This new track was a good challenge for us. It was difficult to implement the right strategy in qualifying. The tires weren’t easy to handle for a single lap, so we had to find the right strategy: many teams tried different things to get the best possible lap out of the car. I could have done better on my first lap in Q3 and I couldn’t finish my second fast lap because there were yellow flags following Massa’s accident.
Overall, it’s good work from the team, we have prepared well and laid the foundations to have a good race tomorrow.
Christian Horner – Team Principal:
A great qualification by the whole team allowed us to achieve our sixteenth pole position and thus break the record for the most pole positions achieved by the same team in a season. Locking out the front row, after Lewis’s relegation, puts us in a good position for the start of the race tomorrow.
The dilemma was whether to do one or two laps, but Sebastian managed to do two laps that were good enough for pole position. Getting Mark to do two laps on his first set of tires in Q3 was the right strategy, so first and second is a great starting position for this first Indian Grand Prix, on a track that has been a real challenge for drivers and is a really exciting place.
