Planet-F1

Qualy: Hamilton signals his intent

Saturday 15th March 2008

Lewis Hamilton got his title campaign off to a great start in Australia on Saturday, clinching pole position ahead of BMW's Robert Kubica.

With the new qualifying format reduced to just ten minutes, with no fuel burn-off, Hamilton crossed the line with a 1:26.714 to beat Kubica by just 0.155s.

Heikki Kovalainen will start his first race as a McLaren driver from row two on the grid after he posted the third fastest time ahead of Ferrari's Felipe Massa.

Meanwhile there was disappointment for Massa's team-mate, reigning Champion Kimi Raikkonen, who will start 16th on grid come Sunday afternoon.

The Finn suffered a mechanical failure in the final moments of Q1, stopping his car tantalisingly shot of the pitlane.

Weather Conditions
Sunny, dry, with an ambient temperature of 23C, track temperature of 38C

Qualifying 1
The key difference in qualifying this year is the fact that the Q1 session has been lengthened to 20 minutes and Q3 reduced to 10 minutes.

Sebastien Bourdais started the new season off with a very cautious first lap of 1:30.250. In the opening phase of the race a lot of drivers ran onto the grass, with Timo Glock looking the lariest of them all. Toyota had been forced to change a gearbox after morning practice but nobody was quite sure whether he would take a five-place grid demotion because of it.

Giancarlo Fisichella reduced the pole time to 1:28.131, while Bourdais kept on running to take it back with a 1:27.446.

With 20 minutes to play with, there was a whole "first phase" of drivers taking to the track - Bourdais, Vettel, Fisichella, Glock, Nakajima, Sutil, Sato, Davidson (almost the de facto back of the grid) had the track to themselves for three or four laps before the serious runners came out.

Jarno Trulli then reduced pole to 1:27.77 and Nico Rosberg reduced it furtherto 1:26.886.

Heikki Kovalainen in his debut McLaren qualifying performance showed that he meant business (and his Melbourne woes of 2007 were gone) with a P1 of 1:25.664. Lewis Hamilton would have beaten him, but came up to a slower runner in the final two turns and had a lurid, oversteery moment which lost him almost a second. Significantly Robert Kubica went P2 for BMW.

With three minutes left to run, the order at the back was:
13. Barrichello
14. Trulli
15. Coulthard
16. Bourdais
17. Button
18. Fisichella
19. Sutil
20. Piquet
21. Sato
22. Davidson

Ferrari had kept their nerve the longest, sending out Raikkonen and Massa last of all. However as the slowest runners geared up for their final laps, Kimi Raikkonen was crawling towards the pitlane having comfortably qualified for Q2.

As the Ferrari crept into the pitlane it got slower and slower. It came to rest outside the limit of the pitlane, on a part still deemed to be part of the race track. He was out. The team had suffered fuel pressure regulator problems on Friday and this was a recurrence at the worst possible time.

Meanwhile back on the circuit David Coulthard jumped to P6, while Adrian Sutil spun his Force-India in the final sector. Barrichello took P6 off Coulthard and Button, too, managed to make himself safe with the P11 time.

Nelson Piquet junior looked terribly slow and his time 1.6 seconds slower than Fernando Alonso wasn't even good enough to beat Sato's Super Aguri. Alonso was only 14th but Jarno Trulli jumped up to P9 to make it into Q2.

As the dust settled, the losers were:
17. Fisichella
18. Bourdais
19. Sutil
20. Sato
21. Piquet
22. Davidson

Glock squeaked in in 16th place despite his excursions and homeboy Mark Webber was perilously close to the drop in 15th place. However Raikkonen was the biggest casualty of the session and Nelson Piquet junior had a qualifying debut to forget.

At the end of the session there was just a second separating 4th and 16th places!

Qualifying 2
Sebastian Vettel was the first to set a time in Q2 taking P1 with a 1:26.291, Coulthard lowered it to 1:26.181.

As everyone (bar the BMWs) took to the track, cameras caught a puff of carbon dust exploding from the front right of Mark Webber's Red Bull as he was sent skeetering off into the gravel. The local boy was out due to a car failure and the session was red-flagged to recover his car with 8 minutes 37 seconds of the session left to run. (And only two times on the timesheet).

Felipe Massa was first out when the session resumed and lowered the pole to 1:25.691. More significantly, Robert Kubica was able to go 0.3 quicker and took pole to 1:25.362.

Would we get a Pole on pole? Lewis Hamilton had other ideas and took the P1 time with a 1:25.187. With three minutes remaining the dropzone was:
8. Button
9. Vettel
10. Barrichello
11. Alonso
12. Webber (stopped)
13. Trulli
14. Glock
15. Nakajima
16. Raikkonen (not running)

Almost all the drivers improved their times as they crossed the line on their final laps. Rubens Barrichello, who finished his lap early, jumped to P7 and Button P10. But then Vettel stuck his Toro Rosso in P6, Coulthard went P8 leaving both Toyotas in the top 10, but Alonso outside of it. So out went:
11. Barrichello
12. Alonso
13. Button
14. Nakajima
15. Webber
16. Raikkonen

Though Fernando Alonso was the major casualty of the session, Mark Webber would have been hoping to get into the Top 10 at his home GP. Kazuki Nakajima also qualified seven places below team-mate Nico Rosberg (up in P7).

Despite being eliminated from Q1 the Honda drivers were celebrating as though they'd taken the front row - P11 and P13 is clearly a lot better than they thought they were going to get. Button admited that he should have got inside the top ten and that two key mistakes lost him two-tenths of a second. However star of the session - if not the whole of qualifying - was Vettel in a mighty P6.