McLaren 1-2, Hamilton Steals Pole From Alonso

By Sam Cooper
June 17 2007

Fresh off his first formula one win last weekend, the young Britain has looked very strong this weekend, the momentum of his first win, ever helping the 22 year old to soar to new record breaking heights. Despite Fernando Alonso’s best efforts, the reigning world champion couldn’t do anything to stop Lewis taking pole position off him.

From practice results we knew the running would be close, which made the qualifying session even more exciting than it is normally is, added with the high track and air temperatures, the stage was set for a fantastic and entertaining qualifying session.

Alexander Wurz struggled with the handling of his Williams and lost out on a critical place for the second part of the qually session, which will certainly not help his points scoring chances on Sunday.

Other drivers who missed the cut, and therefore failed to get into the second part of the session were Takuma Sato, Vitantonio Liuzzi, Scott Speed, Adrian Sutil and Chrsitijan Albers.

Places for the final part of the qualifying session would be fought for even more, the gap between 1st and 10th places was a miniscule 0.7 seconds leaving no room for even the slightest of errors. Those that didn’t have the cars to get through to the final fuel burning stage of the qualifying session were: David Coulthard, Ralf Schumacher, Jenson Button, Nico Rosberg, Rubens Barrichello, Anthony Davidson.

The third part of qualifying was slightly cooler on the track, which made the fiercely contested final session slightly more bearable for the drivers. Seven minutes into the final part of the session the tension started to heat up. The drivers coming into the pits in attempt to get pole position. The Ferrari’s went top, with the McLaren’s still on their out laps. Fernando went quickest, just seconds later Britain’s Lewis Hamilton bet Fernando by 0.115 seconds.

The ten remaining drivers then pitted for one late minute attempt at pole. It was between the two McLaren’s, Fernando failed to beat his earlier attempt, Lewis had nothing to lose, this didn’t stop him from giving it his all, the British driver ended his final lap four one thousandths of a second.

Complete final lap times from the qualifying session will be shown below.