Indian Grand Prix Saturday F1 Final Practice and Qualifying Report

Practice 3 : Vettel hits back to top
The third and final practice for the Indian GP commenced at 11.00hrs (IST). After a conservative Friday, the newly crowned world Champion Sebastien Vettel was back on the top of the timing. The Red Bull driver recovered to form quickly. Jenson Button bounced back to speed and clocked the 2nd fastest time ahead of Mark Webber and Lewis Hamilton. Practice 2 topper Massa timed 6th fastest behind Ferrari team mate, Alonso. Paul di Resta of Force India showed some relief to the Indian fans by clocking 7th fastest time while Indian driver Narain Karthikeyan clocked 22nd.

Qualifying : Vettel takes pole after close battle from Hamilton
The first ever Indian GP qualifying took place at 14:00hrs(IST). The Q1 was surprisingly dominated by Petrov and Alguesuari while the other top runners like Vettel, Hamilton and Webber ran a conservative session. Button had to set a time at the lost moment to safeguard his place to the Q2 as he was almost on the verge on elimination zone. Vettel dominated Q2 by lapping .4secs more the Hamilton.

The Q3 became very tight between the top 4 drivers toppling each other with their best times. At the last moment it looked like Hamilton was about to grab pole but the Double Champion Vettel pulled out his antic like all other races this season to grab his 11th pole in 2011. Hamilton, Webber, Alonso, Button were the top 5 qualifiers. But due to penalties of several drivers including Hamilton, the starting will different tomorrow. Later in the evening the stewards decided to penalise home boy Narain Karthikeyan 5 grid spots as he impeded Schumacher in qualifying. Narain will start from the same position he position he qualified as Timo Glock who could not set a qualifying lap time got eliminated from the race but the stewards decided to let him race tomorrow.

The starting grid order will be : Vettel, Webber, Alonso, Button, Hamilton, Massa, Rosberg, Sutil, Buemi, Alguersuari, Schumacher, di Resta, Maldonado, Senna, Barrichello, Petrov, Kobayashi, Kovalainen, Trulli, Perez, D'Ambrosio, Ricciardo, Karthikeyan & Glock