Nico Rosberg will look to ram home his advantage over world champion Lewis Hamilton by extending his ideal start to the Formula One season in China on Sunday.
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Valtteri Bottas took fifth position, just 0.050s off Vettel and a tenth of a second ahead of the second Red Bull of Daniil Kvyat.
Rosberg’s only real difficulty was at the start, when he was passed by Daniel Ricciardo, although the Australian’s stint at the top was soon halted when he picked up a puncture a result of the first lap melee. We’re definitely well aware of the threat from Ferrari especially, Red Bull, we’re not quite sure for tomorrow, maybe them as well.
Hamilton will start the race at the Shanghai International Circuit with his second power unit of the season after his Mercedes suffered a MGU-H failure in the first session of qualifying. “We saved tyres, so we start tomorrow on super-softs”.
There was another Red Flag earlier on at the start of Q1 when the Manor of Pascal Wehrlein aquaplaned and crashed on the pit straight immediately after opening up the DRS flap on his car’s rear wing.
Meanwhile, Vettel and Raikkonen topped the times with Rosberg was sixth in the first part of qualifying.
“I’m pleased of course”, said Rosberg.
The German DTM victor, who made his F1 debut this year, was the victim of some unfortunate timing, activating his DRS at the wrong moment and going over a puddle on a now-drying track.
“I’m not really sure, I haven’t done the strategy stuff yet but I would think that is going to be a good thing yeah”.
Hamilton hasn’t won a race since he clinched his third title at the U.S. Grand Prix in October and trails team mate Nico Rosberg, victor of the opening two races of the season and last three of 2015, by 17 points.
“On the last one I was quite a bit up on that lap and I just ran wide on the hairpin and obviously I lost a lot of time”, said Raikkonen.
Neither Fernando Alonso nor Jenson Button had completed a run on new tyres in second qualifying when the red flag was thrown because a wheel came off Nico Hulkenberg’s Force India – an incident which subsequently earned the German a three-place grid penalty.
“I guess it was unlucky, and then the safety auto put us even further back, so that was a double whammy – it felt like getting punched in the stomach by a heavyweight”. Britain’s Jolyon Palmer, whose Renault team-mate Kevin Magnussen was almost one second faster, is to start only 19th.
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Alonso missed the Bahrain race after a major crash in Australia and although still troubled by rib injuries has returned to action this weekend.
