Red Bull's clever again.

Photo:Alex Comerford

Recently there has been some rumbling from Bernie Ecclestone about how F1 rules should not be conceived by the FIA, which is perhaps more interested in image and politics, but by the teams and the Formula 1 organizers . Bernie says, we know what we need and we should make the rules, the FIA's job should be to simply enforce them.

Hard to argue with that when the FIA mandated KERS rule can be , cleverly, circumvented as Red Bull has. Apparently one of the main technical issues this season is with the placement of ballast within the car, this year the location is restricted. Red Bull is rumored to be using a miniature version of KERS with much smaller, lighter batteries and used exclusively for the start when not having it would mean getting burned off the line. This allowed Adrien Newey to balance the car much better providing crucial drivability and blinding speed. Combine that with Vettel, who burned everyone by 7/10th, and you have a package that can only defeat itself.

Check out turns 11-12, that left-right complex on the back side of the track, the speed is absolutely mind bending.

Pos  Driver                Team                  Time             
 1.  Sebastian Vettel      Red Bull-Renault      1m23.529s
 2.  Lewis Hamilton        McLaren-Mercedes      1m24.307s  + 0.778s
 3.  Mark Webber           Red Bull-Renault      1m24.395s  + 0.866s
 4.  Jenson Button         McLaren-Mercedes      1m24.779s  + 1.250s
 5.  Fernando Alonso       Ferrari               1m24.974s  + 1.445s
 6.  Vitaly Petrov         Renault               1m25.247s  + 1.718s
 7.  Nico Rosberg          Mercedes              1m25.421s  + 1.892s
 8.  Felipe Massa          Ferrari               1m25.599s  + 2.070s
 9.  Kamui Kobayashi       Sauber-Ferrari        1m25.626s  + 2.097s
10.  Sebastien Buemi       Toro Rosso-Ferrari    1m27.066s  + 3.537s
Q2 cut-off time: 1m25.882s                          
11.  Michael Schumacher    Mercedes              1m25.971s
12.  Jaime Alguersuari     Toro Rosso-Ferrari    1m26.103s
13.  Sergio Perez          Sauber-Ferrari        1m26.108s
14.  Paul di Resta         Force India-Mercedes  1m26.739s
15.  Pastor Maldonado      Williams-Cosworth     1m26.768s
16.  Adrian Sutil          Force India-Mercedes  1m31.407s
17.  Rubens Barrichello    Williams-Cosworth
Q3 cut-off time: 1m27.222s                          
18.  Nick Heidfeld         Renault               1m27.239s
19.  Heikki Kovalainen     Lotus-Renault         1m29.254s
20.  Jarno Trulli          Lotus-Renault         1m29.342s
21.  Timo Glock            Virgin-Cosworth       1m29.858s
22.  Jerome D'Ambrosio     Virgin-Cosworth       1m30.822s
23.  Tonio Liuzzi          HRT-Cosworth          1m32.978s
24.  Narain Karthikeyan    HRT-Cosworth          1m34.293s

107% time: 1m31.266s