A great qualification session have just finished in Barcelona, Spain. The surprises continued happening and many questions that surfaced will have to wait until tomorrow to get an answer.
The first session ended without any big surprises in the last places as the drivers who took places 17 - 22 were the ones expected to do so. However we watched the Renault team going really fast with F. Alonso going remarkably faster than his teammate and quite fast generally.
The second session showed us that we can expect a lot of things to happen before the end.
during the final session, the first place changed ownership many times as every driver fought for the best possible position. Kimi Raikkonen was the final winner of the pole, but the real surprise came from F. Alonso.
The Spaniard managed to get the second place - he was in pole just before Kimi crossed the line - in front of his fans, with a great lap. Alonso completed his flying lap without any mistakes and has been very fast during the whole practice and qualification sessions.
There is a question of course about the amount of fuel loaded to his car, so we will have to wait until tomorrow to see if Renault managed to make a jump in its performance, or the team just wanted a good result in its first driver home country.
Massa and Kubica took the positions in the second line with L. Hamilton and H. Kovalainen taking positions 5 and 6 respectively. Webber and Truli followed with Nick Heidfeld and N. Piquet jr closing the first ten spots.
So who won and who lost here? Ferrari is certainly the winner, showing that they have the fastest cars on track at the time. Renault is the big winner here since they will have their car in the first line again tomorrow, after a long period of time.
McLaren seemed unable to follow the leaders, and Hamilton seems to be unable to carry the team on his shouders. If we have to make a prediction here we can say that McLaren is slowly sinking due to the lack of a driver who can test and evolve the car.
BMW is also doing well, although they looked like having some problems deciding what tyres to use, especially with Nick Heidfeld. He was running on the harder ones while the majority of the teams have been using the softer compound. Heidfeld switched tyre compounds just before his final effort.
We have to mention here that the gap between the first and the tenth is smaller than a second so it is really hard to say who really did well. This can mean two things : Either the smaller teams improved their performance and closed the gap between them and the leaders, or the teams have chosen different race strategies for tomorrow, and have been running on different fuel loads.
The qualification results are as follows:
1 Kimi Räikkönen Ferrari 1:21.813
2 Fernando Alonso Renault 1:21.904
3 Felipe Massa Ferrari 1:22.058
4 Robert Kubica BMW Sauber 1:22.065
5 Lewis Hamilton McLaren-Mercedes 1:22.096
6 Heikki Kovalainen McLaren-Mercedes 1:22.231
7 Mark Webber Red Bull-Renault 1:22.429
8 Jarno Trulli Toyota 1:22.529
9 Nick Heidfeld BMW Sauber 1:22.542
10 Nelsinho Piquet Renault 1:22.699
11 Rubens Barrichello Honda 1:21.049
12 Kazuki Nakajima Williams-Toyota 1:21.117
13 Jenson Button Honda 1:21.211
14 Timo Glock Toyota 1:21.230
15 Nico Rosberg Williams-Toyota 1:21.349
16 Sebastien Bourdais STR-Ferrari 1:21.724
17 David Coulthard Red Bull-Renault 1:21.810
18 Sebastian Vettel STR-Ferrari 1:22.108
19 Giancarlo Fisichella Force India-Ferrari 1:22.516
20 Adrian Sutil Force India-Ferrari 1:23.224
21 Anthony Davidson Super Aguri-Honda 1:23.318
22 Takuma Sato Super Aguri-Honda 1:23.496
