Five things we learnt from Spanish GP qualifying

Rosberg CAN do it in 2015

No matter how ‘in the groove’ a driver is, it’s not going to happen at some stage. Even Michael Schumacher didn’t have it all his own way. And so it has proved in Spain, where Lewis Hamilton – who has been locked into a sublime Saturday groove all season to date – was finally bested by Nico Rosberg. P3 and Q2 indicated as much, with Nico ahead in both - and with Hamilton unable to respond in the final session.

Advantage Rosberg, then, but can he get his first win of the season on the board on Sunday? Sir Jackie Stewart thinks he can. “Nico can do it,” the three-times world champion told Sky F1 after qualifying, “and he just did a very clean lap – no spectacular nonsense but just very clean. He’s been the second man too often, almost.”

This has, of course, increased the burden Rosberg has been carrying. It’s bound to affect a driver’s confidence, although this particular driver has insisted he sees no reason to change his approach. “I’m also not planning to change anything major for this race here. Onwards and upwards,” he said ahead of qualifying.

So it proved, and Stewart reckons that Nico can find a groove much like Lewis has. “It can be very depressing to suddenly be beaten by your own team-mate in a consistent way. And now if he gets a crack on, he can win races,” he insisted.

“The most important thing is mind-management: to get your head clean, not to be distracted by anything, not to overdrive, not to over-try. Because when you over-try and overdrive, you don’t give the car the best opportunity to do what it can do.

“If he drives that car sweetly, keeps his head together and doesn’t run off the road, he can easily win this race.”

Given the foundation he’s built himself, Rosberg really does need to do so. But even if he does, the question then is whether he can start cracking on elsewhere.

Raikkonen's qualifing woes continue

Another week and another qualifying defeat for Kimi Raikkonen who appears to have lost his mojo over a flying lap.

He now trails new team-mate Sebastian Vettel 5-0 on Saturdays in their intra-team battle, after being thumped 16-3 in qualifying by Fernando Alonso last year at Ferrari.

The Finn seemed downbeat all day and removed some of Ferrari’s upgrades off his car ahead of the session.

“It is unrelenting misery with Kimi it seems, he never seems happy with his car,” said Sky F1’s Damon Hill. "I look down there and you have Valtteri Bottas, who has been mentioned at Ferrari, and he has to find something because qualifying is pure pace."

For the man who took five poles for McLaren in 2005 when opposed by the likes of Ferrari’s Michael Schumacher and Renault’s Alonso, the single-lap pace has dried up. Raikkonen’s last pole came in 2008 at the French GP!

Raikkonen’s Saturday problems were highlighted this weekend, with Vettel lining up third and the Finn seventh – behind the Williams of Valtteri Bottas and both Toro Rosso cars – despite having the second fastest package on the grid.

And it is not the first time that he has disappointed in qualifying this season, having been beaten by both Williams cars in China, which compromised his Sunday.

There is no doubting his race pace, as we saw in Bahrain as Raikkonen hunted down the Mercedes cars, but he is making life difficult for himself.

With Bottas already being touted as a replacement, Raikkonen needs to close the gap on Saturdays. As Hill ominously warned: “You need to get closer to your team-mate to stand a chance of surviving at Ferrari.”

Toro Rosso’s rookies continue to impress

Once again it was Toro Rosso’s Carlos Sainz and Max Verstappen stealing the limelight from the drivers at the senior Red Bull team in qualifying.

In front of his home fans, Sainz took fifth on the grid to record Toro Rosso’s best gird slot of the season and once again lead the Renault charge. The performance was made all the more remarkable given that the horsepower deficit of the French power unit should be amplified at the Circuit de Catalunya.

Sainz has had the chance to flourish with the spotlight placed on his 17-year-old team-mate and the reigning Formula Renault 3.5 champion is starting to look like a very accomplished grand prix driver.

Not that Verstappen didn’t impress as well, qualifying sixth and just a tenth behind his team-mate. Pre-season testing was the Dutchman’s only previous experience of the track, but again he confounded the sceptics by also leaping ahead of Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen in the closing stages of Q3.

The problem for Red Bull will be if both junior drivers continue to impress; they will want to be in a car capable of challenging for a world championship sooner rather than later. 

McLaren-Honda are now faster than…Sauber and Force India

Something we’ve definitely learnt is that in changing the paint job on their MP4-30, McLaren-Honda have also saved a kilo or two in weight. It was a similar trick that first gave the original Mercedes team their ‘Silver Arrows’ nickname, although they opted to ditch the idea of paint altogether. Let’s face it, a “dynamic, predatory, graphite-grey colouration, complemented by dayglo ‘Speedmarks’ and keylines” was probably not on any team’s agenda back in the 1930s.

But is the car any quicker? It certainly seems that way, with Fernando Alonso and Jenson Button reaching Q2 for the first time this season. They line up 13th and 14th respectively, ahead of both Saubers and Force Indias (and Manors) which represents progress. But only of sorts. “You always look forward don’t you,” Button said afterwards, “you never look behind.” They were still over 1s off the top 10 in Q2; in Melbourne’s season-opener, that gap was 1.5s. As we know, if a week (or a day) is a long time in politics, 1s an eon in F1.

The argument will be that McLaren-Honda’s development curve is still steeper than those of rivals farther along their own programmes. Even so, the feeling persists that progress is not what they might have wished for.

Lotus seem to be losing the development battle

Briefly, there appeared a bit of a buzz about the black and gold team in China, where Romain Grosjean finished behind the Williams drivers – who were told over the radio afterwards that the Frenchman had actually been quicker than them towards the end of the race. It indicated a team on the up – except that doesn’t appear the case so far this weekend. Grosjean and Pastor Maldonado qualified 11th and 12th on a track where, with hotter-than-expected track temperatures, they might have shown better. Instead, Grosjean lost his 100% Q3 record for the season to date, with his E23 about 0.7s slower than Daniel Ricciardo’s Red Bull, which was 10th fastest in Q2.

Assuming the weather in Barcelona stays hot and sunny on race day, the team will be hoping for more. The word afterwards was that they'd been conservative in order to save tyres, but that the top 10 was probably out of reach even if they'd given it their all. Grosjean complained of understeer, yet qualifying also hinted that Lotus may be fighting a losing battle in terms of development - certainly compared to Red Bull and Williams, the teams they’re targeting this year.

“I think that they’ve got a good car and they’ve moved forward a lot and well done to them,” Williams chief technical officer Pat Symonds said in Bahrain of the threat Lotus pose. “But like many teams, they really are quite tight on budget and therefore I think the development they’ll be able to do is somewhat limited."