Vettel continues domination, wins 10th pole in Italy

MONZA, Italy- R.I.S.-  Continuing with his domination of the 2011 Formula One season, Sebastian Vettel recorded a  1:22:275 final lap time to win his 10th pole of the season for Sunday’s Grand Prix of Italy at Monza. McLaren drivers Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button were second and third, respectively.

For Vettel, it was his second pole at this famous track since 2008, when the German was a Toro Rosso driver, giving that team their only win so far. But for Vettel, he made it all sweeter, knowing that he took pole position on Ferrari’s home track.

“We thought it would be much closer, we were not sure how the tires would be,”.Vettel later said. “But we stayed out and we would have not expected this time gap. We do not carry a lot of wing around but we were able to put it all together.”

But Vettel had to challenge in the first session as Hamilton took the honors with the best time of 1:23:976. The only minor incident of the day was when Pastor Maldonado spun his Williams into the guardrail just feet from the pit entrance when the Colombian had a DRS system failure coming out of Parabolica. Vettel managed to eclipse this time with a better one in the second session, recording a 1:22:914. The luckiest man of the day was Bruno Senna, who just put his Renault into the final session, by just making it into 10th place, six thousandths of a second in front of a disappointed Paul Di Resta, who finished 11th.

Fernando Alonso, who won this race for the Tifosi last season, took fourth, while Mark Webber was very quiet all day, finishing fifth. Felipe Massa was sixth in the other Ferrari, while Vitaly Petrov finished seventh in the other Renault. Michael Schumacher and Nico Rosberg were the next two in their Mercedes cars, while Senna preferred to save his car for race day, finishing in tenth.

Considering that Hamilton finished in second, the Englishman knew that the team had a lot to do for race day.

“I did not have another second, and we would have got another second, but it looked like we could be competitive -but not today.” He said.

Button meanwhile was pleased with third, but agreed with his teammate.

“From third it is tough to get ahead at Monza, but it will tough to get past Red Bull. But I am looking forward to a good race.” Stated Button.

Vettel was not sure how fast his car would go, especially in the final period, when it looked like he could improve his time, but a mistake in the final chicane ruined his chance.

“I did not think we could have improved the car this week,” he said, “But I am glad that things worked out in the end and I am very happy.”