Spanish Grand Prix Qualifying

[MikeLane]

Spanish Grand Prix

Alonso comes close to pole on his home circuit but Raikkonen takes it in dying seconds of qualifying.

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Spanish Grand Prix
Circuit de Catalunya, Barcelona
Round 4
Apr.26, 2008

By
Mike Lane
F1 Correspondent

QUALIFYING

The circuit is 4.655 Km (2.892 miles) long and is quite bumpy in places. It is the most popular testing circuit used by the teams and each team does hundreds of miles of testing here each year. Traditionally races have tended to be quite processional here and so a good grid position is vital.

In the first session the only real surprise was David Coultard’s poor result when he was eliminated in the Red Bull. He was joined by Sebastian Vettel in the Toro Rosso, Giancarlo Fisichella and Adrian Sutil for Force India, Anthony Davidson and Takuma Sato in Super Aguris.

In the second session we saw all the top eight cars separated by small margins with Nelsinho Piquet just 0.310 secs behind the fastest car. This was as usual the fastest session with the lightest fuel loads and Felipe Massa came out top with a time of 1.20.584 min.

Those who failed to make it through to the third session were Rubens Barrichello for Honda, Kazuki Nakajima for Williams, Jenson Button for Honda, Timo Glock for Toyota, Nico Rosberg for Williams and Sebastien Bourdais for Toro Rosso.

During the third and final session cars carry their race fuel loads and so strategy always play a part. In this session there was a good deal of change in the fastest times with Lewis Hamilton, Massa and Kimi Raikkonen all having their turn.

With three minutes to go Massa posted a time of 1.22.058 min and looked to be a strong contender for pole but to the delight of the Spanish crowd, Fernando Alonso in the Renault went quickest. It appeared he may have fuelled light to please the home crowd, but then in the dying seconds of the session Raikkonen went quickest with a 1.21.813 min to take the pole for Sunday’s race.






The grid order at the end was:

Raikkonen, Ferrari
Alonso, Renault
Massa, Ferrari
Kubica, BMW Sauber
Hamilton, McLaren
Kovalainen, McLaren
Webber, Red Bull
Trulli, Toyota
Heidfeld, BMW Sauber
Piquet, Renault


Once again the grid is a little mixed up for Sunday’s race with Alonso getting on the front row but the Ferraris still looked strong and generally in better shape for the race.

Mike Lane
F1 Correspondent

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