Bahrain Grand Prix – Qualifying Results: P8

| Source: autosport.com | lotusf1team.com | twitter | gallery |

Pos  Driver               Team/Car              Time       Gap
 1.  Nico Rosberg         Mercedes              1m32.330s
 2.  Sebastian Vettel     Red Bull-Renault      1m32.584s  + 0.254s
 3.  Fernando Alonso      Ferrari               1m32.667s  + 0.337s
 4.  Lewis Hamilton       Mercedes              1m32.762s  + 0.432s
 5.  Mark Webber          Red Bull-Renault      1m33.078s  + 0.748s
 6.  Felipe Massa         Ferrari               1m33.207s  + 0.877s
 7.  Paul di Resta        Force India-Mercedes  1m33.235s  + 0.905s
 8.  Adrian Sutil         Force India-Mercedes  1m33.246s  + 0.916s
 9.  Kimi Raikkonen       Lotus-Renault         1m33.327s  + 0.997s
10.  Jenson Button        McLaren-Mercedes
Q2 cut-off time: 1m33.702s                                      Gap **
11.  Romain Grosjean      Lotus-Renault         1m33.762s  + 1.016s
12.  Sergio Perez         McLaren-Mercedes      1m33.914s  + 1.168s
13.  Daniel Ricciardo     Toro Rosso-Ferrari    1m33.974s  + 1.228s
14.  Nico Hulkenberg      Sauber-Ferrari        1m33.976s  + 1.230s
15.  Valtteri Bottas      Williams-Renault      1m34.105s  + 1.359s
16.  Jean-Eric Vergne     Toro Rosso-Ferrari    1m34.284s  + 1.538s
Q1 cut-off time: 1m34.425s                                      Gap *
17.  Pastor Maldonado     Williams-Renault      1m34.425s  + 1.547s
18.  Esteban Gutierrez    Sauber-Ferrari        1m34.730s  + 1.852s
19.  Charles Pic          Caterham-Renault      1m35.283s  + 2.405s
20.  Jules Bianchi        Marussia-Cosworth     1m36.178s  + 3.300s
21.  Giedo van der Garde  Caterham-Renault      1m36.304s  + 3.426s
22.  Max Chilton          Marussia-Cosworth     1m36.476s  + 3.598s

News & Quotes:

Hamilton gets five-place grid penalty

Raikkonen says Lotus just too slow:

“We were not fast enough. This was our maximum. Maybe we could’ve been a few places better, but like I said yesterday, it didn’t feel exactly like we want. It’s just one of the places where we don’t seem to have the speed. Hopefully tomorrow it will turn out different. We need more grip. We know we’re probably missing a bit of downforce compared to the top guys. Every day is different. Whatever happened last year is not going to help us tomorrow. We had an OK long run yesterday so hopefully it will work better. I cannot tell you where we’re going to finish. That would be stupid. We can only do our best and hopefully that will be a better result than today. I hope that our tyres can last in better shape than some of the others.”

Lotus Team Quotes:

Kimi Raikkonen: “It wasn’t the easiest qualifying session after a weekend which hasn’t been the easiest so far either. Yesterday it was difficult at times to find the balance with the car and I found that again today. This morning it felt good and we didn’t do too bad in free practice, but we didn’t quite get it right this afternoon. My lap wasn’t great, but it’s a long race so we’ll just have to see what we can do tomorrow.”

Romain Grosjean (11th): “It’s obviously disappointing to miss out on Q3 but it’s just one of those things. There weren’t any issues with the car, we just tried to be a little too brave by doing just one run and unfortunately it didn’t pay off. On the positive side, we’ve found a lot of performance this weekend compared to the first three races and our pace on the prime tyres in Q1 looked very strong. We qualified in similar positions last year and came away with a double podium, so it’s still all to play for.”

Alan Permane, Lotus trackside operations director: “We’re obviously disappointed with the qualifying result. We just missed the cut for Q3 with Romain who had been looking strong, but unfortunately the track evolution caught us out a little bit and he made a couple of small errors on his only lap in Q2. If this hadn’t been the case, we’re sure he would have made it through. Kimi’s session was a bit more of a mystery. His second run in Q2 was pretty respectable but it just didn’t come together for him in Q3. He’s been strong all weekend up until that point, so we’ll need to trawl through the data this evening to understand what happened. Romain has plenty of new tyres to work with and starting on fresh rubber should give him a good boost at the start and through the first stint. We can decide which compound he will start on so we’ll be crunching the numbers to work out the optimum strategy. Romain has plenty of new tyres to work with and starting on fresh rubber should give him a good boost at the start and through the first stint. We can decide which compound he will start on so we’ll be crunching the numbers to work out the optimum strategy. We were very happy with our long run pace yesterday, with both cars showing decent pace and manageable tyre degradation levels. It’s a tough race on tyres which tends to work to our advantage and we managed a great result from a very similar situation this time last year, so we’re certainly not out of it yet.”