Bahrain Grand Prix: Rosberg takes pole for Mercedes

So much for the 2013 Mercedes being uncompetitive.

Nico Rosberg put in a strong performance in Bahrain in qualifying for tomorrow’s F1 race, beating Sebastian Vettel in to second place and Fernando Alonso in to third. But whether this was a qualifying ‘special’ from Mercedes we won’t really know until tomorrow.

The rest of the grid is a bit mixed up thanks to grid penalties for Lewis Hamilton and Mark Webber. Hamilton qualified in fourth in the second Mercedes but will start in ninth on the grid and Mark Webber managed to put his Red Bull in fifth but will start in eighth place.

That means sixth place Massa will actually start alongside team mate Alonso in an all-Ferrari second row, and a sterling performance from Paul di Resta in the Force India sees him promoted from seventh in qualifying to start in fifth place tomorrow with team mate Adrian Sutil alongside for an all Force India row three.

Row four sees the demotees – Webber and Hamilton – side by side and the final row from qualifying has the Lotus of Kimi Raikkonen in ninth and the uncompetitive McLaren of Button scraping in at tenth after failing to complete a lap in final qualifying.

It’ll be interesting to see if the Mercedes’ can translate their qualifying performance in to sustained race pace, but it does look like it will be an Alonso/Vettel battle tomorrow.

(note: qualifying results are affected by grid penalties as outlined in the article above for the race)

By Cars UK