Lewis heads all McLaren front-row

Lewis Hamilton underlined McLaren’s stunning resurgence by claiming his first pole position of the season as the team secured a front-row lock-out on the streets of Valencia.


Fresh from his first win of his largely dismal title defence before Formula 1’s summer break in Hungary, the Briton produced a one-lap Q3 wonder to beat team-mate Heikki Kovalainen to pole by 0.034s with a 1m39.498s.


Rubens Barrichello confirmed Brawn's return to something close to its best form with a fine third, while Red Bull's Sebastian Vettel pipped points leader and title rival Jenson Button in the other Brawn to fourth.

However, the title contenders would arguably have been chasing Kovalainen, rather than Hamilton, at the very front in Sunday's race had the under-pressure Finn not made a costly mistake towards the end of his crucial final lap.

Kovalainen – told to raise his game by team boss Martin Whitmarsh this week if he wants to remain at the team into 2010 – had looked odds-on to claim just his second career pole after going quickest through the first two sectors.


But he got out shape going over a kerb coming out of the fast penultimate corner, which destabilised his car’s MP4-24 back-end for the left-handed final turn, and meant he came up short.




It meant Hamilton had the luxury of aborting his own final lap, having banged in his eventual benchmark time on his very first Q3 effort – an impressive turnaround considering he missed virtually all of Friday’s second practice session after damaging his upgraded MP4-24 in a spin.

With the fight for pole eventually proving an all-McLaren affair, the title contenders had to settle for the second and third rows at best with Barrichello confirming Brawn’s liking for the sweltering Valencia conditions with third having topped low-fuel Q2.


The Brazilian only completed one Q3 run, as did Vettel - the Red Bull ace recovering impressively from his morning engine failure to edge out Button for the second row by a mere 0.031s.

Fifth-placed Button’s nearest points rival, however, Mark Webber had to settle for ninth place as his struggle with the Red Bull around the fast street circuit continued.


With Luca Badoer continuing to lap a long, long way off the pace, Kimi Raikkonen carried Ferrari to sixth on the grid with a late improvement to nip ahead of Williams’s ever consistent Nico Rosberg.


Home favourite Fernando Alonso couldn’t repeat either his impressive Friday form or his Hungary pole and had to settle for eighth ahead of the struggling Webber.


And just weeks after confirming it would be pulling out of the sport at the end of the season, BMW’s latest car upgrades helped returned it and Robert Kubica to the top 10 for the first time since Turkey in June.


The sister car of Nick Heidfeld will start immediately behind on row six after missing out on his first Q3 appearance of the year, at the expense of Raikkonen, by 0.044s.


Adrian Sutil confirmed the improvement Force India had shown throughout practice in its heavily upgraded car by taking a dry-weather high of 12th, ahead of Timo Glock as Toyota endured a disappointing session.


Renault rookie Romain Grosjean hit his target of making Q2 and will line up a solid 14th as his steady debut race weekend continued, the GP2 graduate lapping within a respectable 0.32s of team leader Alonso’s second session time.

Meanwhile, fellow young-gun Sebastian Buemi made the second stage for the second successive weekend for Toro Rosso and will head up row eight.

Giancarlo Fisichella had probably expected to be in Q2 too given Force India’s practice form, but the Italian veteran failed to clear the first hurdle after best lap was 0.4s slower than team-mate Sutil, leaving him 16th on the grid.

Similarly disappointed will be Kazuki Nakajima after the Japanese driver, who had run comfortably in the top 10 throughout practice, failed to clear the first hurdle after his Williams stopped on track in the middle sector.

The Japanese driver now looks unlikely to open his 2009 points account from 17th on the grid with the stop-start circuit offering few overtaking opportunities.

Jarno Trulli never looked likely to progress in the second stage and could only set the 18th quickest time, the Italian’s Toyota a world away from the pace that secured him fifth place in last year’s inaugural race.

Jamie Alguersuari will again start on the back row for his second F1 race as the 19-year-old teenager failed to fully get to grips with the Toro Rosso around the physically-demanding street venue, lapping a full second slower than Buemi in his first home grand prix.

However, while struggling himself, his lack of speed relative to his team-mate was nothing compared to Badoer, whose troubled F1 return after a decade on the sidelines failed arguably got even worse in Q1.

Having lapped 2.6s slower than team-mate Raikkonen and 1.5s off Alguersuari alone, the 38-year-old may now need to pull out something special in Sunday’s race if Ferrari isn’t seriously to reconsider its decision to keep him in the car until Felipe Massa’s return.


European GP starting grid


1. HAMILTON McLaren
2. KOVALAINEN McLaren
3. BARRICHELLO Brawn
4. VETTEL Red Bull
5. BUTTON Brawn
6. RAIKKONEN Ferrari
7. ROSBERG William
8. ALONSO Renault
9. WEBBER Red Bull
10. KUBICA BMW
11. HEIDFELD BMW
12. SUTIL Force India
13. GLOCK Toyota
14. GROSJEAN Renault
15. BUEMI Toro Rosso
16. FISICHELLA Force India
17. NAKAJIMA Williams
18. TRULLI Toyota
19. ALGUERSUARI Toro Rosso
20. BADOER Ferrari