And now for something completely different?

Red Bull Racing has had a car on pole position at every one of this year's Formula One Grand Prix. This statistic is impressive enough (or depressing enough, depending on your point of view) and it becomes even more so when you consider that, over the first seven races of the 2011 season, the average difference between the RBR pole sitter's Q3 lap time and that of the nearest non-Red Bull car is more than half a second (0.536 seconds, to be precise).

2011 Q3 qualifying times (after seven races):

Australia
1. Sebastian Vettel 1:23.529
2. Lewis Hamilton 1:24.307

Malaysia
1. Sebastian Vettel 1:34.870
2. Lewis Hamilton 1:34.974

China
1. Sebastian Vettel 1:33.706
2. Jenson Button 1:34.421

Turkey
1. Sebastian Vettel 1:25.049
2. Mark Webber 1:25.454
3. Nico Rosberg 1:25.574

Spain
1. Mark Webber 1:20.981
2. Sebastian Vettel 1:21.181
3. Lewis Hamilton 1:21.961

Monaco
1. Sebastian Vettel 1:13.556
2. Jenson Button 1:13.997

Canada
1. Sebastian Vettel 1:13.014
2. Fernando Alonso 1:13.199

With the engine mapping clampdown recently announced by the FIA, however, this weekend's European Grand Prix in Valencia may signal the beginning of the end of Red Bull's qualifying dominance. If their Saturday afternoon supremacy is indeed due to aggressive engine mapping, then a very large spanner may just have been thrown into the works of this already immensely exciting 2011 F1 season.