Indian-born Kaltenborn has been with the Hinwil-based outfit for over a decade having initially joined to head up its legal department but has was given a front-line chief role by Sauber when the veteran retook control of his eponymous team at the end of 2009 following BMW’s sudden pull-out, becoming Formula 1’s first female chief executive. Sauber has already said he sees the 41-year-old as his successor as team principal when he retires for the second time and today has underlined the faith and trust he has in her by transferring 33% of the long-established operation into her name. Sauber retains the remaining two thirds of equity in the Sauber Group.

The 68-year-old was badly stung by the experiences of late 2009 when, four years on from selling the team he founded to BMW in the belief that this would ensure its long-term future, he felt morally obliged to step back into the breach when the German carmaker pulled out of F1. Sauber says Kaltenborn played a key role in that process and, given she shares his vision for the future of the team, he wanted to reflect that and recognise it in the ownership structure.

“When BMW pulled out of Formula One in 2009, Monisha Kaltenborn was instrumental in the team’s survival and since then she has been doing outstanding work in her capacity as CEO,” said Sauber in a statement. “Transferring one third of the stake to her represents an important step for me in providing continuity. My desire is to ensure that the company continues to be led as I would want over the long term. Monisha Kaltenborn and my son Alex, who joined the company as Marketing Director in 2010 and has since also been a member of the Board of Management, both embrace this aim. It means we can offer our employees a positive outlook for the future.”

Given the transfer appears to have been a gift rather than having a financial element, the gesture is considerable given 33% of Sauber is likely to be worth a minimum of £20 million. Kaltenborn herself has said: “For me this step is a mark of the greatest possible trust, which I will do everything in my power to justify.”

After overcoming initial financial and on-track struggles on his return to the team owner hotseat, Sauber has seen his team make back steady progress back up the grid and at the Malaysian GP in March Sergio Perez’s claimed the team’s best ever race finish of second under his sole control.

There were several key moments and decisions which decided the outcome of this race. The main one was the early second stop of Maldonado. But there was another before the race had even begun and it eliminated the favourite for the race win.

Hamilton’s race to lose
Lewis Hamilton should have won this race comfortably for McLaren, with a 0.6second per lap car advantage. But a mistake by the McLaren team when he did his final run in qualifying ruined his chances.

Due to a refuelling error, Hamilton’s car did not have enough fuel in it to complete the lap and be legal at the end. Team boss Martin Whitmarsh has since admitted that he should have told Lewis Hamilton to abandon his hot lap, as the team had realised by then that it had not put enough fuel in his car. Had he done this Hamilton would have started the race from 6th place, with a time set earlier in Q3. Instead McLaren did not act, Hamilton completed the lap, switched the engine off and then the team tried to argue force majeur for the error. The FIA Stewards sent him to the back of the grid from where 8th was the best result achievable.

Hamilton made up four places at the start from 24th on the grid and managed to get his tyres to last 14 laps in the first stint, the longest of any front-runner. He had climbed to fourth place when he stopped and rejoined in 14th place. He made his way through the field with a combination of overtakes and a two stop strategy which meant he did 21 laps on his second set of tyres and 31 on the final set, both of which were the hard compound. He lost time in the second stint behind Massa, otherwise a better result might have been possible. He got ahead of Massa when the Brazilian served a drive-through penalty on lap 29 for using DRS in a yellow flag zone.

By extending the stints, Hamilton was able to make up places when the three stoppers made their final stop and he kept the tyres alive for 31 laps, losing only one place at the end to Vettel and almost getting one back from Rosberg. It was a fine drive, but he and McLaren know that his first win of the season was there for the taking this weekend, had they made a different decision in the heat of the moment in qualifying.

Getting the planning right
On Friday practice, with track temperatures above 40 degrees, the soft tyre was working well as a race tyre. However expectation before the weekend was that the temperatures would be lower on race day than the rest of the weekend.

This led some teams to plan to save three new sets of hard tyres for the race, as these have a lower working temperature range than the softs and would therefore come into their own in those conditions. This turned out to be the correct thing to do; the track was at 44 degrees on Saturday and this dropped to 32 degrees on Sunday and the hard was the faster tyre. Williams and Maldonado did this, Ferrari had only two new sets for Alonso. Red Bull were also one of the teams to save three sets.

However the plan didn’t quite work out for them as they didn’t have the pace in qualifying or the race. Sebastian Vettel was forced to use up all his soft tyres just to get through into the final part of qualifying. This meant that he had no new sets of softs for a run in Q3 and was only 8th on the grid. Both cars required a front wing change during the race, the team combined it with a tyre stop but it wasn’t ideal timing tactically. Vettel also had a drive through penalty so he did well to finish ahead of the McLarens in 6th place.

Maldonado beats Alonso through strategy

The cars are so close together this year, winning is all about getting out the front of the pack early on, as Vettel did in Bahrain and Rosberg did in China.

The race was again fought out between the two cars on the front row of the grid. However Spain was only the second time in five races (the other was Malaysia) where the car leading the first lap did not go on to win the race. This was all down to strategy. Williams believed that they had a pace advantage over Ferrari and expected the challenge for the win to come from Lotus. However they knew they were vulnerable to Alonso’s excellent starts. Maldonado duly lost the start to the Ferrari driver and then Alonso had enough pace in the opening two stints of the race that Maldonado wasn’t able to get close enough to attack.

Importantly, however, the Williams had better tyre life at the end of the stints and at the end of the second stint, Maldonado closed up on Alonso, from over three seconds to half of that. Williams pitted him two laps before Alonso for the second stop and Ferrari allowed their driver to stay out and run into slower traffic. This is something they have allowed to happen before.

The call to try the undercut (pitting earlier than opponent and using pace of new tyres to get ahead when he stops) was made by Williams’ head of strategy Mark Barnett. He brought Maldonado in on lap 24 when he was 1.5 seconds behind Alonso. Having saved the sets of new hard tyres, Barnett calculated that he would then have the tyre life to do 42 laps with one more stop to make without losing pace at the end.

It was brilliantly executed; his in-lap was 0.4s faster than Alonso’s, the stop was only 0.2secs slower than Ferrari’s, but crucially on new hard tyres his out-lap was 2.6 seconds faster and the first flying lap was also a second faster. With Alonso losing time behind Pic, Maldonado had done enough to take the lead from the Ferrari when it stopped to laps later than the Williams

However as Alonso pushed hard in his wake to stay with him in the final stint, we got a graphic example of how following another car speeds up the degradation of the tyres, Alonso wasn’t able to stay with Maldonado until the end, as the degradation caused by running in traffic was more severe than running in clear air. Alonso’s tyres had done three laps in qualifying, so were the same age more or less as Maldonado’s.

Lotus and McLaren – what might have been

Although they had the fastest car in race practice simulations on Friday afternoon, were third and fourth on the grid and set the fastest lap of the race on Sunday by over a second, Lotus didn’t win. Why not?

Temperature has something to do with it; the drop to 32 degrees on race day took the edge off their speed (so fine are the margins now!). They also made a strategy mistake at the first stop, putting the cars onto a set of used soft tyres, rather than the hards. They pushed the stints out to make sure they’d have a chance at the end. As the temperatures rose towards the end of the race we got to see what the Lotus could do. The Lotus set the fastest lap of the race, over a second faster than the nearest car. Raikkonen’s final stint was 18 laps, Alonso’s 23 laps, Maldonado’s 25 laps. Alonso was vulnerable to attack from Raikkonen in the final laps, but he ran out of laps. Perhaps if he’d stopped one lap earlier he would have passed Alonso for second at the end.

Starts are a vital part of race strategy and we saw the experience of Raikkonen over the nervousness of Grosjean at the start. Although the younger man was ahead on the grid, Raikkonen was ahead in the opening lap and Grosjean fell behind Rosberg, whose pace was much slower and so held him up. The Frenchman lost 8 seconds in the first 9 laps. Worse still, Mercedes pitted Rosberg first as a defensive move and he stayed ahead in the second stint, so Grosjean had to pass him on track.

The first win for Lotus this year is surely not far away.

RACE HISTORY

This is the Race History chart from the Spanish GP, kindly provided by Williams F1 Team. The chart’s main use is to show track position and also gaps between cars. The zero line is best viewed as a “ghost” car which is setting the average lap time of the winner (his race time divided by 66 laps) and you can see how the lap times evolve relative to it. Note Lotus’ pace relative to the leaders in the final stint, for example, when the temperatures went up and they set the fastest lap of the race.

After his accident in Hungary 2009 they again stood by him, helping him back into the car for 2010. But now, with such a tight field at the front in F1, the signs are that their patience is running out, highlighting the “drop off” in his performances.

In the 43 races since his ‘comeback’ in 2010 Massa has scored an average of six points per race and has been on the podium five times. There were no wins, but he did move over, on team orders, to let Alonso through in Germany in 2010, a race which he would otherwise probably have won.

In that same 43 race period Alonso has scored an average of 13.2 points per race. With seven wins.

On Sunday Massa came home 15th. Like Sebastian Vettel with whom he was fighting, he had to serve a drive through penalty for using DRS in a yellow flag zone, but Vettel (who also had to have a front wing change) finished 7th while Massa did not recover.

Ferrari boss Stefano Domenicali called this “unlucky” but also commented, “We expect Felipe to react and fight back..we absolutely need his points to also fight for the constructors’ championship.” Ferrari lie fourth in the constructors’ points table at the moment having finished a distant third in 2010 and 2011.

On the Ferrari website today they look at it like this. “As for an analysis of the Scuderia’s performance and its two drivers, Fernando has always maintained a very high level (67 points and second place in 2010, 51 and fifth place last year) while Felipe’s drop off has made itself felt. The Brazilian had picked up 49 points two years ago and 24 the following year, while so far this season he has just 2. In Montmelo, Felipe was very unlucky, both in the race and in qualifying, but everyone, he more than anyone, is expecting a change of gear starting right away with the Monaco Grand Prix, his second home race, given that he lives just a few hundred metres from what, as from next Sunday, will be transformed into the paddock for the sixth round of the 2012 championship.”

Ferrari are in a difficult situation. If a ready made replacement for Massa was clear, they might already have made a switch. The fact that there isn’t one keeps him there.

To improve its chances, it will need an established driver but it will be hard to get an established driver to move mid-season. Test driver Jules Bianchi is far from ready for a move like that and even Sergio Perez is too inexperienced to cope. It could ruin his career to make a move too soon.

What is making the situation all the more painful is that Lotus are scoring a lot of points and Mercedes have the potential to outscore Ferrari too. They could end up fighting for the drivers’ title with Alonso but finish up fifth in the Constructors’

Time to act, or time to support and try to turn it around for Massa, before replacing him with Webber or Perez or Di Resta or whoever next season?

Read the Ferrari team statement HERE

Listen to Jaime Alguersuari’s analysis of Massa’s problems on the 5 Live Chequered Flag Podcast HERE

“Following yesterday’s fire which occurred in the team’s garage after the Spanish Grand Prix, Williams F1 can confirm that a further two team members have now been released from hospital and have returned home having received treatment for smoke inhalation.

“One member of the team remains in hospital in Spain having suffered burns in the incident. He is stable and will return to the UK within the next 48 hours to receive further medical care. His family are in constant communication and he is in good spirits.

“Investigations into the cause of the fire are on-going in collaboration with the FIA and local authorities.”

The team member with burns is believed to be the person who was emptying the fuel bowsers when the fire broke out.

Mark Gillan, who is in charge of race operations at Williams, said that most of the equipment in the garage at the time has been lost, including computer hardware, telemetry and pit equipment.

This will affect their preparations for the Monaco Grand Prix, where they may not have the full range of parts and equipment they might have expected to have, but Gillan is confident that this will not affect performance.

Three senior members of the McLaren team, who have worked at Williams; Paddy Lowe (technical director), Neil Oatley (director of design and development) and Sam Michael (sporting director) have offered to loan Williams equipment and anything else they need to get back on track.

Do we often not give enough credit to the drivers in midfield cars?

For years F1 races have been won by an elite of drivers from top teams with perhaps only 7 drivers managing to visit the F1 podium in the course of an entire season. In five races this season, we’ve already had 9 drivers on the podium and five different winners.

But this year with the performance of a number of cars so close and with the way the Pirelli tyres work, it is offering an opportunity for more drivers to shine.

Traditionally when drivers arrive in F1 they have usually won races and championships in junior categories, but then they find that in midfield teams they struggle to shine. Fans dismiss them because they aren’t able to fully evaluate what they are able to do, as they are lost in the soup of midfield.

However in 2012 we’ve seen some stunning drives from the likes of Perez and particularly Maldonado yesterday, which makes everyone realise that success has been more about opportunity and car pace rather than elite driver ability. Of course the cream rises to the top and the leading drivers are in top teams with big salaries for a reason. They become the elite because of the consistently high peaks of performance from Alonso, Vettel, Hamilton and other top stars.

They have always won because their teams build them fast cars, get them set up to maximise the tyres and then take advantage of the car pace to get the strategy right. That has always been the way of F1.

But the positive thing about the racing this year is that it shows that given a chance with a car which can use the tyres well, a wider range of drivers can shine.

It was a similar story in 2009 when Jenson Button showed that his poor results with Honda were to do with the car, not him and that he was capable of winning a championship.

Perez and Maldonado were dismissed as ‘pay drivers’ because they have strong sponsor backing from their home countries. But after Malaysia everyone was talking about Perez getting a Ferrari seat and Maldonado impressed even the most hardened F1 insider yesterday. Others like Di Resta and Kobayashi are surely capable of doing the same, given the opportunity.

The championship will be won by one of the elite, but it’s refreshing for the drivers deeper down the field to show that they should not be underestimated.

To keep up to speed with all the latest F1 news and developments use JA on F1 Connect to give you the full picture at a glance.

Pastor Maldonado

Wasn’t really on the radar in the Friday practice sessions, however the team could see that the race pace was strong. Showed good pace in final practice on Saturday to lead many drivers to suggest Williams would be strong in the race. Kept a cool head to comfortably make it into Q3 and then produced the best lap of his career to provisionally hold pole before Lewis Hamilton usurped him at the end. Was promoted to pole position after Hamilton’s penalty. Tried to hold off Fernando Alonso at the start, but the Spaniard was able to get down the inside at Turn One. Kept his head, and looked after his tyres in the early part of his race before the team tried the undercut at the second round of stops. By pitting earlier, he managed to leapfrog Alonso. Was impressive as he looked after his tyres in the final stint after intense pressure from Alonso and held on to secure his first victory in F1. A popular win.

Fernando Alonso

Appeared in good spirits on arrival at the venue of his home race and gave the fans something to cheer about by topping the times in first practice. Easily made it into Q3 and held pole position until Maldonado and Hamilton bettered his time. Was promoted to second as a result of Hamilton’s penalty and made a great start to lead into Turn One for the second time in two years. Stopped two laps later than Maldonado at the second round of stops, a move which saw him lose time and the lead. Pressurised the Williams driver for the lead but lost ground in the closing stages before holding off a fasting finishing Kimi Raikkonen to finish second. As a result, he retook the joint championship lead alongside Sebastian Vettel on 61 points. Given the car he’s had to work with that’s some achievement.

Kimi Raikkonen

Arrived in Barcelona as one of the favourites for victory after a supreme performance in Bahrain to finish second. Showed strong race pace in Friday practice but struggled to find the right set-up and qualified fifth, which turned into fourth after Hamilton’s penalty. Passed his team-mate at the start but couldn’t keep up with Alonso or Maldonado during the first three stints. By making his final stop later than those in front, he had more life in his tyres and was able to reduce a 20-second gap to 0.6 seconds at the end however it was not enough to gain a position and he finished third for his second successive podium. The Finn is now 12 points behind joint championship leaders Alonso and Maldonado.

Kamui Kobayashi

Made it into Q3 in qualifying, but was forced to watch on the sidelines after stopping out on track with a fuel leak. Started ninth after Hamilton’s penalty and made a good start to run seventh early on. Looked after his tyres well but was baulked by traffic and struggled to make progress. As the race wore on, he put good moves on Jenson Button and Nico Rosberg to lift up into fifth – and equal the best finish of his career – but admitted after the race that a podium was possible.

Lewis Hamilton

Solid in practice but came into his own during qualifying. Eased through Q1, got everything right on his first run in Q2 so was able to save a set of tyres and then blitzed his final lap in Q3 to secure his third pole of the season. Described his lap as one of the best he’d ever driven. However, he ran low on fuel on his in-lap and was told by his team to stop on track which resulted him getting disqualified and sent to the back of the grid. Remained in good spirits and a good start saw him make five places up on the first lap. Showed he could look after his tyres by doing a 31 lap final stint, making a two-stop strategy work – everyone else did three – and finished eighth to score valuable championship points.

Nico Hulkenberg

Struggled for pace in qualifying and could only manage 14th, one place behind Force India team-mate Paul di Resta. Had a good start, but struggled to make much progress early on. A good, clean strategy from the team helped him rise up the field and into the points and then spent much of his race holding off the Red Bull of Mark Webber. Produced some great skills to keep the Australian behind and held on to score a point for tenth – his second points scoring result of the season.

The Williams team was celebrating its first win since 2004, with Sir Frank Williams in the garage and team members as well as media present having just done a celebratory photograph.

The garage was quickly evacuated, but the fire took hold quickly and the garage was gutted. Thick plumes of acrid smoke poured out from the garage

Williams media staff confirmed that no-one had been seriously hurt; four Williams staff members were being treated. It’s believed one is for burns and the rest for smoke inhalation. Meanwhile four staff from the next door Caterham team also received attention, as did one Force India staff member, but were unhurt. The nine were among a total of 31 people who were seen by medical services, according to the FIA, which said that seven people had been taken to hospital.

There is no precise word yet as to what caused the fire, but it appears it occurred while the team was emptying the fuel bowser in the back of the garage. There had been suggestions from other team sources that KERS could have been involved but nothing has been confirmed. Williams and the local emergency services are working together to establish the cause.

Senior figures from two teams said that a fresh look at safety procedures would likely follow this incident.

McLaren’s Jonathan Neale said that existing F1 team health and safety procedures involve a full report being filed on the garage set up at every Grand Prix and a list of how hazardous materials are stored. There is a comprehensive book on how to store fuel, for example, and an incident of this kind hasn’t been seen in Formula 1.

But safety is taken very seriously by teams and the FIA and both sides are likely sit to down via the mechanism of the Sporting Working Group, which oversees operational activities, to review safety measures.

It was Maldonado’s first win in his 24th Grand Prix start and the first for a Venezuelan. He is the fifth winner and car combination in five Grands Prix, the first time that has happened since 1983.

“We are getting better race after race,” said Maldonado. “This is a dream for Venezuela and a great moment for our country.”

Maldonado started from pole position after Lewis Hamilton was demoted to the back of the grid due to a refuelling irregularity after he set pole position. He lost the lead at the start to Alonso, got it back by undercutting the Ferrari driver at the second stop and then held on to the flag. On slightly older tyres than Alonso he saw the Spaniard close up on him, but his ability to drive Sector 3 of the lap, with the slow chicane leading to the high speed final corner onto the straight, meant that he was able to measure the gap to the Ferrari and stay out of reach in the DRS zone, in much the same way as Vettel did with Hamilton here last season. It was a brilliantly judged win.

Hamilton managed to come through the field on a two stop strategy, whereas everyone else did three stops. He finished in 8th place, ahead of team mate Jenson Button, managing his tyres through two long stints of 21 and 31 laps respectively. After a huge disappointment after qualifying, it was a very strong drive by Hamilton to limit the damage. Romain Grosjean finished fourth with Kamui Kobayashi making sure the updates to the Sauber yielded a good result in fifth place. Vettel was sixth with Rosberg seventh.

It was an entertaining race with plenty of action throughout the field. Tyre strategies were fairly standard in comparison to last year’s race here, with three stops the choice of most drivers, except Lewis Hamilton. The harder Pirelli tyre seemed to be the better race tyre on the day.

At the start Maldonado was jumped by Alonso, who steamed up the inside into turn one. Raikkonen also made a good start, moving ahead of team mate Grosjean, who fell behind the Mercedes of Nico Rosberg.

Alonso held a steady gap of three seconds to Maldonado until the second phase of pit stops. At this point Williams opted to pit early, and a combination of very fast in/out laps from Maldonado and Alonso being held up by the Marussia of Charles Pic allowed Maldonado to take the lead. It stayed this order for the remainder. Maldonado was able to with-stand sustained pressure from Alonso in the final 20 laps of the race and conserve his tyres sufficiently, finishing the race three seconds clear of second place.

Raikkonen followed closely home in third position as the pre-race favourite for many had a fairly quiet race, making his way in to third at the start and never being troubled from then on. The sister Lotus of Grosjean made a poor start and he found himself behind Nico Rosberg and Sebastian Vettel on the first lap. However, Grosjean was able to re-pass those in front and set the fastest lap on the way to another high points scoring finish.

Kamui Kobayashi drove a great race to fifth position, the Sauber driver starting from tenth and making some characteristically brave moves to make his way through the field towards the end of the Grand Prix. He headed home Vettel, the double World Champion having a frustrating day consisting of traffic and a drive-through penalty for not respecting yellow flags. Although, he will be quite satisfied to increase his points lead over the McLaren duo of Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button. Hamilton had run as highly as fourth in the race, following his exclusion from qualifying, and an ambitious two-stop strategy paid off for the Briton as he closed ever closer to the Mercedes of Nico Rosberg in the latter stages, just missing out on seventh place by 0.2 seconds. Mercedes gained only seven points from the Grand Prix after Michael Schumacher collided with Bruno Senna at Turn one, causing both to retire. Button meanwhile had another forgettable race, complaining of grip issues on both sets of tyres and finishing in ninth position.

Completing the points was Nico Hulkenberg, the Force India driver was another to absorb sustained pressure as he denied Mark Webber a points scoring finish. Webber had lost a lot of ground at the start of the race due to a front-wing change.

It was another race that gave a different picture of the state of play in F1 today, the field is so close on performance and the management of the tyres is important, we see different winners and different teams competitive at every round.

Alonso lapped the Red Bull of Mark Webber here, for example, a strange turn around given that he finished almost a minute behind the Red Bull of Sebastian Vettel in Bahrain three weeks ago. Ferrari brought six major changes to its car here and they’ve certainly made some progress. But the picture is still confused as to the peacking order of the cars as it changes from track to track. It is however clear that McLaren has had the fastest car at every race and yet is not leading the championship.

“When are are first and second in qualifying and race we can say we have the best car,” said Alonso, when asked about Ferrari’s progress. “This year it’s hard to have a pace advantage or to be happy with the car because it’s so close. Consistency will be important this year. We have had probably the most difficult start to the championship and we are leading the championship with Vettel so we have to be proud. I’m a bit surprised by the result, we were hoping for some signs of improvement, so we arrived here with optimism, but the pace this weekend has been better than expected. I still don’t really know where we are. Maybe we overperformed a little bit with the car we have and some other teams underperformed.”

Raikkonen was third for most of the race and pitted later than the leading pair and was on a charge in the closing stages, another lap and he would have passed Alonso for second place. His start set him up for a good race, but the choice of the soft tyre at the first stop was probably a mistake, which cost him the second place. Raikkonen knows that he again had the car to win the race.

“We ve been doung some small things not correctly and there have been some mistakes on my side and it’s going to cost you a lot,” he said afterwards. “As long as you give yourself the chance to fight at the front I think our car can do it.”

Michael Schumacher was penalised by stewards after the race for colliding with Bruno Senna. The stewards gave him a five place penalty at the next race in Monaco.

There was drama an hour after the race as a fire broke out in the Williams pit garage, the fire brigade had to attend as thick, acrid smoke plumed out across the Catalunya paddock. Four members of staff from Williams, four from Caterham and one for Force India were treated for smoke inhalation and there was believed to be one case of burns, for which the person was taken to hospital for checks, but team sources said that no-one was badly injured.

SPANISH GRAND PRIX, Barcelona, 66 Laps

1. Maldonado Williams 1h39:09.145
2. Alonso Ferrari + 3.195
3. Raikkonen Lotus + 3.884
4. Grosjean Lotus + 14.799
5. Kobayashi Sauber + 1:14.641
6. Vettel Red Bull + 1:17.576
7. Rosberg Mercedes + 1:27.919
8. Hamilton McLaren + 1:28.100
9. Button McLaren + 1:25.200
10. Hulkenberg Force India + 1 lap
11. Webber Red Bull + 1 lap
12. Vergne Toro Rosso + 1 lap
13. Ricciardo Toro Rosso + 1 lap
14. Di Resta Force India + 1 lap
15. Massa Ferrari + 1 lap
16. Kovalainen Caterham + 1 lap
17. Petrov Caterham + 1 lap
18. Glock Marussia + 2 laps
19. De la Rosa HRT + 3 laps

Hamilton had 1.3 litres of fuel in the car on his cool down lap when the McLaren team told him to switch off the engine. The rules say that a car must have 0.5 litres for a sample, plus enough to get the car back to the pits, which is around 2.5 litres on this track.

McLaren boss Martin Whitmarsh had said that he felt the team would escape penalty but he was wrong. The stewards will have been mindful of the fact that the rules were revised following a similar incident involving Hamilton in Montreal two seasons ago. Having taken pole he stopped on track with not enough fuel to get back to the pits. McLaren claimed that there were mitigating circumstances due to a technical issue on fuelling in the garage before his final run which left him short of fuel.

Hamilton said late last night, “This is such a disappointment. Today’s qualifying session was one of the best I’ve ever driven – the whole car was just rolling so smoothly – it felt fantastic. The team had done a fantastic job to bring the updates here this weekend – so I want to say a huge thank-you to all the men and women at the MTC for working day and night to get all the new components here this weekend.

“But, on my slowing-down lap, my engineers told me to stop on the track, and I didn’t know why. Later, to hear that I’d been excluded from qualifying, was of course extremely disappointing.
“But, now, looking ahead to tomorrow, I think it’s clear that it’s going to be an incredibly tough race for us. Even so, as always, I’ll never give up and I’ll give it everything I’ve got. It would mean so much to me to get a good result here in Spain: it’s such a pleasure to come here and the support I get is amazing.

“As I always say, and as I always do, whatever grid position I start a Grand Prix from, I’ll always race my heart out.”

How did it happen? My BBC colleague Gary Anderson saw the refuelling and said this, “The fuel rig guy put the rig on, but he had the handle set to drain fuel. He discovered his mistake and switched it to put fuel in the car. But as a result he didn’t put as much fuel in it as he should have. He (Hamilton) went across the start-finish line 20 seconds before the chequered flag but if they had sat in the garage for three or four more seconds to get more fuel in, they still would have had time to cross the line and complete another flying lap. Sometimes I don’t think McLaren think on their feet.”

After the problems with botched pit stops lately this will deal another blow to McLaren’s confidence in the fine details of its operations.

The dramatic move means that Pastor Maldonado starts the race from pole position in the Williams, the team’s first pole since 2010 and the first ever for a Venezuelan driver. The news broke as Williams were celebrating team founder Sir Frank Williams’ 70th birthday in the team’s motorhome, prompting a double celebration.

Spain’s Fernando Alonso starts alongside him on the front row of the grid, with the Lotus duo of Romain Grosjean and Kimi Raikkonen looking set for a very strong result on row two. The Lotus’ long run pace was very strong in Friday practice, while Sauber’s Sergio Perez looks competitive starting 5th on the grid with the Sauber again working well on long runs on both tyre compounds.

Tyres were again the dominant story, as teams tried all manner of curious strategies to give themselves the best chance in the race.

Sebastian Vettel looked good in practice but really struggled for pace in qualifying and was forced to use up all his new soft tyres simply to make the cut into Q3. Once there he didn’t set a lap time so he could have a free choice of tyres for the start of the race.

Red Bull got the tactics all wrong with Mark Webber, who felt he had the car to get pole. He was left in the garage in the final stages of Q2 with a new set of soft tyres available, when he should have been out on track. The track improved by more than the team expected and others went faster, knocking Webber down to 12th spot.

Hamilton’s McLaren team mate Jenson Button set the fastest time in Friday practice but then lost the set up completely; he found his car hard to drive on Saturday, particularly on the hard tyre, complaining of rear instability all day and then of understeer in qualifying on the soft. He starts 11th.

As Hamilton took his third pole position of the season, the 22nd of his career and McLaren’s 150th in Formula 1, he was joined at the front of the grid by Williams’ Pastor Maldonado and Ferrari’s Fernando Alonso. The Williams looked good throughout practice on both types of tyre and an impressive Maldonado was fastest in Q2. Meanwhile the heavily updated Ferrari went well, in Alonso’s hands at least, setting a best time six tenths slower than Hamilton. Whether that is the true reflection of the step Ferrari has taken we will see tomorrow. Alonso finished almost a minute behind the winner in Bahrain. It will be interesting to see how much they have cut that by.

The session threw up many surprises, most notably the level of track improvement. Normally from the start of the hour to the end the track improves by 0.3 seconds, with most of that in Q1. Today it kept on improving, to the tune of around 0.8 seconds. This is what caught out Webber and Red Bull, who thought that they had done enough with a 1m 22.9s lap.

The upside for Webber is that he starts 12th with a new set of soft tyres and three sets of hards for tomorrow’s race.

Hamilton, who had been the pace setter throughout the session, was the only driver in the final phase of qualifying to take two runs. He set his first “banker” lap on a set of scrubbed option tyres that he had previously used in the second part of qualifying. Although, he did leave his second run until very late and only decided to go for it, at the point when it looked like Pastor Maldonado was going to take pole for Williams.

Completing the second row of the grid is the Lotus of Romain Grosjean, the young Frenchman showing no hangover from his complete lack of track time in the morning’s final practice session (fuel pressure problem). He beat his team mate Kimi Raikkonen by just 0.04 seconds. The Lotus cars are sure to once again be a threat tomorrow as they have shown both long-stint pace and an ability to cope with the high levels of degradation in high temperatures.

In sixth position is Sergio Perez, the Sauber driver having a fairly quiet but impressive session. The sister Sauber of Kamui Kobayashi had got in to the final part of qualifying, however a hydraulic issue meant he could not compete in the shoot-out and will start from tenth position. The Sauber cars sandwich Nico Rosberg, Sebastian Vettel and Michael Schumacher. Schumacher, like Vettel, chose to not complete a flying lap, thus allowing him the opportunity to pick his starting compound for tomorrow. However, Rosberg did opt to set a flying time using new tyres on the left hand side of his car and scrubbed tyres on the right side and he found himself 1.3 seconds off the pace of Hamilton at the climax of the session.

Behind the top twelve, which was completed by Button and Webber, the cars lined up in team order; barring two anomalies.

Behind the Force India pair, led by Paul Di Resta, and the two Toro Rosso cars, led by Jean-Eric Vergne was Felipe Massa. Massa could not find the gains from Ferrari’s many upgrades that Alonso managed; he was 0.6 slower than the Spaniard in the second phase of qualifying so he will begin the race in seventeenth. This is one place ahead of Bruno Senna, the second Williams driver looked to make his way into the top seventeen during the first part of qualifying, however a spin in to the gravel at turn 14 on his final lap abolished all hopes of making the cut.

Joining Senna at the tail end of the grid are the Caterham, Marussia and HRT cars. Vitaly Petrov and Charles Pic out-qualified their respective team mates for the first time this year as Narain Karthikeyan failed to beat the 107% time and may not be starting tomorrow’s Grand Prix.

SPANISH GRAND PRIX, Qualifying

1. Lewis Hamilton McLaren 1m21.707s
2. Pastor Maldonado Williams 1m22.285s + 0.578
3. Fernando Alonso Ferrari 1m22.302s + 0.595
4. Romain Grosjean Lotus 1m22.424s + 0.717
5. Kimi Raikkonen Lotus 1m22.487s + 0.780
6. Sergio Perez Sauber 1m22.533s + 0.826
7. Nico Rosberg Mercedes 1m23.005s + 1.298
8. Sebastian Vettel Red Bull No time
9. Michael Schumacher Mercedes No time
10. Kamui Kobayashi Sauber No time

11. Jenson Button McLaren 1m22.944s + 0.839
12. Mark Webber Red Bull 1m22.977s + 0.872
13. Paul di Resta Force India 1m23.125s + 1.020
14. Nico Hulkenberg Force India 1m23.177s + 1.072
15. Jean-Eric Vergne Toro Rosso 1m23.265s + 1.160
16. Daniel Ricciardo Toro Rosso 1m23.442s + 1.337
17. Felipe Massa Ferrari 1m23.444s + 1.339

18. Bruno Senna Williams 1m24.981s + 2.398
19. Vitaly Petrov Caterham 1m25.277s + 2.694
20. Heikki Kovalainen Caterham 1m25.507s + 2.924
21. Charles Pic Marussia 1m26.582s + 3.999
22. Timo Glock Marussia 1m27.032s + 4.449
23. Pedro de la Rosa HRT 1m27.555s + 4.972
24. Narain Karthikeyan HRT 1m31.122s + 8.539