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The FIA now publish the declared weights of the cars at the start of the Grand Prix.  Those cars that made it through to the third qualifying session are weighed directly after qualifying while others have their weights declared by the team shortly after the session.

The top ten cars must use the fuel they qualified with while the rest of the field may refuel before the race.

As every Formula One car weighs the same without fuel (605kg), knowing the weights of the cars allows us to predict when drivers will have to stop and also whether the time set in qualifying is indicative of race pace.

Below is a graph showing the actual top ten qualifying times as well as their times adjusted for the weight of fuel they are carrying.  The graph assumes a standard cost of 0.3 seconds per 10kg of fuel.

The graph shows just how fast the Toyotas are.  Even allowing for the fact that they are carrying less fuel than the Brawn GP cars, Jarno Trulli’s fuel-adjusted time was about half a second faster than Jenson Button.  Will Toyota score their first Formula One victory on Sunday?

All the winter testing at the Sakhir circuit seemed to pay off for Toyota on Saturday as Jarno Trulli and Timo Glock locked out the front row of the grid for Sunday’s Bahrain Grand Prix.

This was the first pole position for the Japanese team since Ralf Schumacher at the 2005 Japanese Grand Prix and the first time Toyota have started from first and second position on the grid.

Red Bull’s Sebastian Vettel will start from third next to the Brawn GP of Jenson Button.

Fresh from his second place finish in last week’s Chinese Grand Prix, Vettel’s team mate Mark Webber returned to his usual unlucky form. He was badly blocked by a swerving Adrian Sutil in the final corner of the first session and ended up in 19th place.

When asked if he would be protesting, Webber didn’t seem to think there was much point:

It doesn’t make any difference.  My race is screwed.

Nelson Piquet Jr has been under a lot of pressure to perform and with the help of an interim diffuser he managed to lift himself out of the first qualifying session but could manage no better than 15th.

2009 Bahrain Grand Prix Qualifying Results

Update: Sutil penalised three places for blocking Webber in qualifying.

Once again the established order is upset and and an exciting qualifying session in Shanghai ended with Sebastian Vettel putting in a blinding lap to take pole position for Red Bull. Fernando Alonso also surprised by putting his Renault alongside him on the front row.

But were those times really indicative of race pace or were their cars fueled light?

Well, thanks to the FIA now publishing the weights of all cars after qualifying we can figure it out for ourselves.  Below is a graph showing the actual lap times of the cars compared to their fuel-adjusted lap times.  Only the top ten are shown because any car that doesn’t make it into the third qualifying session may refuel before the race.

We can see from the graph that the two Brawn GP cars are still fastest and Alonso and the two Red Bulls are fueled pretty light, although Vettel isn’t looking too bad.  Jarni Trulli could also be a threat if he gets a good start from the third row.

Sebastian Vettel showed you can still go fast in Formula One without a fancy double-decker diffuser. While car designer Adrian Newey is back at the factory figuring out how to bolt a new back end onto the car, Vettel drove the RB5 to Red Bull’s first pole position in qualifying for Sunday’s Chinese Grand Prix.

Team mate Mark Webber also did well and almost looked like he was going to take pole but he will start third behind Fernando Alonso.  The Spaniard’s car was running with an interim diffuser although Renault decided not to use KERS.  In fact out of twenty cars, only three (Heidfeld’s BMW and the two McLarens) will be running a KERS device in the race.

For the first time this season there is no Brawn GP car on the front row with Barrichello starting from fourth and Jenson Button behind him in fifth.

Once Adrian Newey comes up with a new diffuser that fits the RB5 suspension, will Red Bull take over from Brawn GP as the team to beat?

2009 Chinese Grand Prix Qualifying Results

Update: Timo Glock drops five places after a gearbox change.

Image: Getty

The FIA now publish the starting weights of the cars after qualifying.  This has both an upside and a downside.  You can now tell the fuel level of each car and therefore get a better idea of overall pace but, conversely, this removes some of the speculation and uncertainty over when a car will have to pit.  Sometimes not knowing whether a car has enough fuel to stay out longer than another is part of the fun.

Either way, the data is now published and so there’s not much point in avoiding it.  I figure we may as well take the good points and see if we can use it to get a better picture of how the cars will perform on race day.

By looking at the weights published we can tell how many kilograms of fuel each car is carrying.  The minimum weight for a Formula One car is 605kg including the driver.  The cars themselves are in fact lighter than this and so ballast is used to add weight to the car in the most advantageous way.  This is where heavier drivers like Robert Kubica are disadvantaged; add in the extra 35kg for a KERS device and there is not much left for ballast.  This is why Kubica is not running KERS in Melbourne like his smaller, lighter team mate.  Every 10kg of fuel is worth on average about 0.3 seconds per lap.

So with that in mind I have put my nerd cap on and plugged the numbers into Excel.  Below is a graph showing the actual lap times of the cars compared to fuel-adjusted lap times.

The cars that made it to Q3 are weighed after qualifying whereas those that were eliminated earlier may refuel before the race.  We can see from the graph above that the Brawn cars were not running light and their weight-adjusted times are still faster than everyone else. Timo Glock is the quickest of the rest but he will have his work cut out for him starting at the back of the grid.