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Triple world champion Sebastian Vettel will start on pole for today’s Canadian Grand Prix after topping the times in yesterday’s rain-hit qualifying session. |
The Red Bull ace will be joined by the Mercedes of Lewis Hamilton on the front row.
The surprise of the session was the performance of Williams’ Finnish driver Valtteri Bottas, who posted the third fastest time ahead of the second Mercedes driven by Nico Rosberg.
Vettel’s teammate Mark Webber and Ferrari’s Fernando Alonso occupy the third row after an incident-packed qualifying in which the second session was red-flagged after Felipe Massa escaped unhurt after a crash.
Vettel, yet to win on the streets of Montreal, said: “I’m looking forward to the race tomorrow, I think we had a strong performance yesterday so whatever happens in terms of conditions it should be good.
“We expect dry conditions tomorrow, but it doesn’t matter. We have both sets of tyres left, but even if it rains we should be in decent shape.”
Hamilton, reflecting on his showing, said: “”I was doing a pretty good final lap but I ran wide, so it was unfortunate but I’m still happy.”
Earlier, Webber took advantage of late drying conditions to clock the fastest time for Red Bull in yesterday’s delayed and truncated final free practice session.
The 36-year-old Australian was the last man out at the right time and lapped in one minute and 17.895 seconds to outpace Adrian Sutil of Force India by three-tenths of a second.
Lewis Hamilton of Mercedes was third fastest ahead of Fernando Alonso of Ferrari, defending triple world champion Sebastian Vettel of Red Bull and sixth-placed Nico Rosberg in the second Mercedes.
Paul Di Resta in the second Force India was seventh, Felipe Massa of Ferrari eighth and Jenson Button of McLaren ninth with Kimi Raikkonen 10th for Lotus.
The final times were almost meaningless, however, because they were all produced in the closing four minutes of a session reduced to 30 minutes because of an earlier delay to repair barriers at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve.
In the drying, rapidly-improving conditions, it was clear that the times were tumbling after a spate of minor off-track excursions earlier when the circuit was more slippery. There were, however, no serious accidents.