Qualifying: McLaren Best Of The Rest

By Sam Cooper
May 24 2008

With rain in today’s free practice session and more rain forecast for the qualifying session, it looked to be a hit and miss type session, with the lucky going out on a dry track and the unlucky going out on a wet track. Sadly for the fans, no rain fell during the three part session, leaving Ferrari’s Felipe Massa to take pole position for tomorrows Monaco Grand Prix.

The rain held off for the duration of the session giving the drivers a breath of fresh air, as they won’t have to navigate the tight and twisty circuit of Monaco in the wet… for now at least.

Going into the session, Ferrari didn’t look as strong as McLaren, they were about half a second slower than the Woking based team, everything looked easy for McLaren, and Hamilton especially to take pole position, which would have given him and the team a relatively easy win tomorrow. However this was not the case, Ferrari looked to pull something out of the bag, locking out the front row of the grid.

It is possible that Ferrari purposefully ran a lighter fuel load than McLaren, giving them the edge for tomorrows race, leaving them to control the race from the front. The only problem with that strategy is the threat of rain or a safety car- which normally strikes the streets of Monaco every time we race here.

McLaren managed to secure the second row of the grid, with just hundredths of a second separating them. Hamilton looks to be on more fuel than the two Ferrari’s with Heikki carrying more fuel than Hamilton, due to him being 0.3 seconds adrift of his teammate.

BMW’s Robert Kubica finished in a very respectable 5th position, ahead of Nico Rosberg in the Williams, that has looked strong throughout the race weekend and looks to be in a very strong position to score some points tomorrow.

Renaults Fernando Alonso was expected to have a better run than he did in today’s qualifying session, the Spaniard could only manage the 7th best time, a full second slower than Massa’s Ferrari, nevertheless he qualified 10 places higher than his teammate, Nelson Piquet, who ended up in a very disappointing 17th position.

Jarno Trulli managed to secure the 8th fastest time in the Toyota, with his teammate finishing 5 places behind him in 13th, with the two Red Bulls in 9th and 10th. David Coulthard suffered a spectacular shunt, which brought the yellow flags out at the end of Q2, luckily David escaped without any injury.

Jenson Button looked to be in with a shot of finishing in a top ten during qualifying, though the 27 year old Brittan could only manage 12th best time. His teammate managed 15th best time, but looks to face a penalty after he blocked one of Giancarlo Fisichella’s laps in Q1

The forecast for tomorrows race is a 90% chance of rain

Times from today are shown below