F1-Blog

Qualifying for Spa

The Qualifying session for Spa was overshadowed by the whole spying affair, but lets not let that distract us from the session.

The four front running cars of the McLaren’s and Ferrari’s have been close all weekend so far. The qualification session showed no change in that.

Q1 saw the new Mike Gascoyne Spyker show better than it has all year, nearly making it into the top 16. Sebastian Vettel again seemed to struggle in the Toro Rosso, he just doesn’t seem to be able to get to grips with it in the same way as he had with the BMW. There was also some tinkering with Massa’s Ferrari at the back end, perhaps another issue with the dampers like he had in the race last week?

Q2 once again saw the German younger Schumacher brother struggle, it seems the bit of resurgence he seemed to have was short lived, and Toyota must just be hoping for his contract to end so they can get some young blood into the team. Other notable losses are Jenson who’s Honda is still not very quick, but starting to look a little better as the season goes on. David Coulthard also missed out on a run in Q3, however his team mate Mark Webber did make it through into final qualifying. The Renault of Giancarlo Fisichella also did not quite make the grade, so again Heikki showed a better pace than his older and more experienced team mate.

Q3 was sort of the session we expected, Massa overtook the slower Hamilton on the out lap, this it seems is because the McLaren car is going longer than the Ferrari’s in the first stint of the race, it may seem so from his final time.

The Qualifying session was dominated by the Scarlet cars though, locking out their first one-two for a while, and only their second this season. They are then followed by the two McLaren cars.

Robert Kubica qualified in 5th, but has to take a 10 place drop as he changed his engine before the qualifying began. This brings Fisi into the top 10, right behind his team mate.

Results

1. RAIKKONEN Ferrari
2. MASSA Ferrari
3. ALONSO McLaren
4. HAMILTON McLaren
5. ROSBERG Williams
6. HEIDFELD BMW
7. WEBBER Red Bull
8. TRULLI Toyota
9. KOVALAINEN Renault
10. FISICHELLA Renault
11. SCHUMACHER Toyota
12. COULTHARD Red Bull
13. BUTTON Honda
14. LIUZZI Toro Rosso
15. KUBICA BMW (after 10 place engine penalty)
16. WURZ Williams
17. VETTEL Toro Rosso
18. BARRICHELLO Honda
19. SATO Super Aguri
20. SUTIL Spyker
21. DAVIDSON Super Aguri
22. YAMAMOTO Spyker