Vettel Speeds To Pole In Europe

European Grand Prix pole winner Sebastian Vettel (center) shares the podium with Lewis Hamilton (left) and Pastor Maldonado. (Steve Etherington photo)

VALENCIA, Spain — After one of the closest battles of the season Red Bull’s Sebastian Vettel finally took pole position for the 2012 Formula 1 Grand Prix of Europe — by 0.316s from McLaren’s Lewis Hamilton.

It was Vettel’s third pole of the season.

“I think it was a great recovery from Q1 and Q2 today, as I didn’t feel entirely happy in those. It had been a good weekend leading up to qualifying, but conditions changed before Q1,” said Vettel. “However in the end we pulled it altogether. Everyone has worked very hard with preparing new parts for the car, which seem to be a step forward. Bringing new parts is not always straightforward, as we’ve seen. Often people try things on Friday, but then go back to their previous set up for the weekend. However this weekend we seem to have made a step forward, although we will give them a proper try tomorrow. We have been good here in previous years, so hopefully we can keep it up for tomorrow. The guys deserve that, they have worked hard all weekend.”

Hamilton will start outside the front row.

“To be honest, I expected to be a lot further back. We’ve struggled all weekend, just with set-up and you know going from P3 to qualifying we had to make some guesses as to what kind of set-up we wanted to change,” said Hamilton. “It seemed to work OK and I’m really, really surprised. The guys obviously did a great job, as always, to get me a good gap and while the car still felt pretty good, I think the gap is still pretty big here and it will be a tough race tomorrow for sure, as always.”

Pastor Maldonado qualified third for Williams-Renault, while Lotus-Renault teammates Romain Grosjean and Kimi Raikkonen rounded out the top five.

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Posted by NSSN Staff on Jun 23 2012 Filed under Formula One, Latest Headlines, Top Stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.