Pole for Raikkonen, drama for Hamilton

The qualifying session for the European Grand Prix saw Kimi Raikkonen claim a well-earned pole position in his Ferrari from Fernando Alonso and Felipe Massa. While the Finn continues his impressive mid-season run, championship leader Lewis Hamilton was firmly out of action.

Hamilton cruised through to the third qualifying session but suffered a big accident minutes later that brought out the red flags and halted the session. The rookie star was on his first real hot lap of the session when the front right wheel suffered a failure. With no steering input the McLaren speared across the gravel trap before making heavy contact with the tyre barrier on the outside of the flat out Schumacher S turn.

The MP4-22 was badly damaged as Hamilton was unable to scrub off much speed before making contact with the front and front right corner of the car. The medical team arrived quickly on the scene as Hamilton clambered from the car. Usual precautions saw the team take their time to remove Hamilton from the scene. Hopefully he will be able to take part in tomorrow’s race as he has no apparent serious injury.

Back on track Alonso appeared to be on a lap good enough for pole position, but lost some time mid-lap and therefore could not challenge Raikkonen.
With Massa third, the BMW Sauber duo of Nick Heidfeld and Robert Kubica qualified a solid fourth and fifth fastest while Mark Webber did a great job in his Red Bull Renault and lines up sixth.

Heikki Kovalainen qualified in seventh position but it was a poor session for Renault team-mate Giancarlo Fisichella who lost one of his runs after taking too much kerbing at the chicane and starts 13th.

Toyota have shown good form all weekend long – as was the case at Silverstone – and line up eighth and ninth with Jarno Trulli just ahead of Ralf Schumacher. For the unfortunate Hamilton, unable to take part in the final runs, he qualified in tenth position.

Williams Toyota will be somewhat disappointed to qualifying outside of the top ten. Nico Rosberg and Alex Wurz proved very evenly matched as they set the 11th and 12th fastest times, but as others made gains – notably Webber and Kovalainen – they slipped back.

Four Honda-powered drivers line up in positions 14th to 17th led by Rubens Barrichello and then the two Super Aguri Honda racers of Anthony Davidson and Takuma Sato. Jenson Button had a poor session and did not make it through the first session and therefore lines up 17th.

Scott Speed and Tonio Liuzzi qualified 17th and 18th for Toro Rosso, seemingly unable to find more pace overnight as had been hoped.

It was a session to forget for David Coulthard who lost time behind team-mate Webber on his first run. He returned to the pits but was then sent out too late in the session to start a flying lap and he starts a disappointed 20th ahead of the Spyker Ferrari duo if Adrian Sutil and Marcus Winkelhock.

Raikkonen is on a roll but no matter what happens tomorrow, Hamilton will retain the championship lead after the chequered flag drops.

Source: F1-Live.com