In other racing news, the Long Beach ePrix starts in about two hours, and Da Costa lost his pole position because his tires didn't have enough pressure. Formula E has been pretty good this season, and while the variation in cars has led to a bit of inequality, its been pretty competitive. Buemi will probably win the title this year, but that's what everyone was saying this time last season and it ended up coming down to the final race.
also, as bad as F1's tires can be, at least it's not like MotoGP this season where drivers were nervous going in to testing, had a number of huge failures in testing, and have been super sketchy ever since. After a tire delaminated in practice today, Michelin announced they were withdrawing BOTH rear tire compounds. That probably won't look too good if they try to apply to do F1 tires again soon.
It should also be mentioned that Hamilton set the fastest lap ever on the track. If there's one good thing about the new qualifying it's that it's stopped people from complaining that turbo hybrid V6 engines are too slow.
@syce300: Red Bull and Mclaren voted against changing quali because they wanted to go back to last year's system. Bernie and Todt are too married to the elimination system to let that happen, though.
E: since i was beaten i should add: I think a proper Q3 would have been a lot more exciting, and i think elimination works ok in q1 I guess, but the biggest issue is that the teams that qualify in the lowest 3 spots straight up don't have enough time to put in another lap, which screws over teams/drivers that take a bit to warm up, or who have a shit first lap. They get punished for it, but everyone at the top gets to try again and then go home early.
Looks like Hamilton will probably get P4, since he won't have time to refuel, do his out lap, then set a new time. The ferraris could potentially get out again, though I don't know if they'd want to since vettel is already in the front row.
E: Well, he's out on track, so maybe they can do it? I might have been off on my math.
Grosjean misses Q3 by a hair. I love how drivers are completely unable to react to having their time beaten, even though this format is made so that they're supposed to be fighting until the clock runs out.
@syce300: I'm cautiously optimistic that they'll be able to keep up that pace through the race, they could have just been running low fuel/soft tires and got a bit lucky. That said, by the end of last year they were battling for p4 (before having to stop because of reliability issues) so i don't think it's wholly unreasonable to hope that Alonso or JB end up on a podium at some point. A bit of bad luck for Ferrari/Merc and they could slip their way up there.
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