F1: Hungarian Grand Prix Qualifying Report

It's probably getting kind of old, but a Red Bull has once again claimed pole position this year. This time Sebastian Vettel is the one who managed to break teammate Mark Webber's two previous pole positions, while also beating the two McLarens piloted by Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button to start from the first row of the Hungaroring circuit on Sunday.

The two main contenders for the pole position seemed to be Vettel and Hamilton, and that’s the way the fight ended, with Button and the two Ferraris behind them. However, it’s Felipe Massa who will start from the second row relegating Fernando Alonso, who celebrated both his 30th birthday and 30th race with the Scuderia team, to fifth place.

Mark Webber in the second Red Bull couldn’t match the pace of the front runners, ending up more than half a second slower than Vettel in sixth place.

Mercedes GP put in a solid performance with Nico Rosberg in seventh and Michael Schumacher in ninth place on the grid. It’s just that the 7-times World Champion and the man who has broken almost every record in Formula 1 was beaten (by 0.8 seconds) by his team-mate, but also by a Force India, that of Adrian Sutil.

PHOTO GALLERY

FIA Investigates Jet Fighter Canopies for Improving F1 Drivers’ Safety

May 1st, 1994: the world watches in shock as Ayrton Senna’s Williams-Renault veers off the track and hits the wall at the Tamburello corner of the Imola circuit. Unfortunately, it was an accident that the most charismatic F1 driver of all times wouldn’t survive as his head injuries were too severe. Just one day before another fatality had hit F1 for the first time in 12 years. Roland Ratzenberger’s Simtek wing broke off before the Villeneuve corner and he hit the wall at 196 mph (315 km/h). The cause of death was basal skull fracture.
Fast forward to 2010 and the Hungarian Grand Prix: a loose spring from Rubens Barrichello’s car struck Felipe Massa’s head at great speed, missing his helmet’s visor by inches. Thankfully, Massa was lucky and recovered quickly from the subsequent injury.
The FIA Institute constantly does research on the matter of safety. And in the second issue of its IQ magazine it has published a research about the possible benefits of combining the aviation and motorsport technologies.
One such research concerns the use of jet fighter-like canopies for the protection of the drivers’ heads. Although it is true that since 1994 Formula 1 has made great leaps in terms of safety, resulting in drivers walking unscathed from crashes that in past years might have been fatal, the fact remains that their heads remain exposed as they reach speeds exceeding 300 km/h. At such speeds, any impact would most likely be catastrophic.
Therefore, the FIA institute is conducting research about incorporating canopies in future F1 cars. If you’d like to see what they’d look like, imagine something like the Caparo T1 -probably without the wheel covers.
To see FIA’s tests (and the three aforementioned accidents) just watch the videos after the jump.

VIDEOS

British GP: Red Bull Takes the Front Row in Qualifying with Webber in Pole Position

The unpredictable weather conditions made the qualifying of the British Grand Prix something of a gamble, and the teams weather forecasts were expecting rain during the final session. So everyone made sure that they got out quickly in order to set a fast time before it started to rain again.

Once again Sebastian Vettel was the man to beat, setting a provisional pole. But this was not to last as his team mate, Mark Webber, recorded a fastest lap just seconds later beating Vettel by just 0.032 seconds.

Behind the Red Bull-occupied front row were the two Ferraris. Third place went to Fernando Alonso, who was just 0.1 seconds slower than Vettel and fourth to Felipe Massa, with the Scuderia obviously very happy with the progress they have made.

Jenson Button’s McLaren was fifth, but his team mate Lewis Hamilton couldn’t manage anything better than 10th place in his home Grand Prix. The surprise of the day was the performance of Paul di Resta, who in his rookie period brought his Force India to the sixth place of the grid.

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