Qualifying Report
Italian GP
Lewis Hamilton snatched pole position from under the nose of Force India's Adrian Sutil in the dying moments of the final qualifying shoot out at Monza this afternoon. Sutil had put in a superb lap and looked to have had pole sown up but Hamilton had other plans. Nonetheless it was another excellent performance from the dramatically improved Force India Team. To further underline their impressive form new recruit Vitantonio Liuzzi also made the final shoot out finishing a very creditable seventh fastest on his return to Formula One. Kimi Raikkonen was the only Ferrari driver in the top ten, securing a second row grid place with the third fastest time. New team mate Giancarlo Fisichella was eliminated in Q2 and will start from 14th place, having done little better on his Ferrari debut than outgoing countryman Luca Badoer.Heikki Kovalainen joins Raikkonen on the second row of the grid which is top heavy with KERS powered cars. Rubens Barrichello once again outperformed his under pressure team mate Jenson Button but on this occasion only marginally so as the two Brawns closed out the third row of the grid with Barrichello just 0.15s to the better. Fernando Alonso was next up in eighth place for a Renault Team embroiled in yet another F1 controversy and facing a meeting with the FIA's World Motorsport Council amid claims of fixing last years Singapore Grand Prix. The Red Bull cars of Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber rounded out the top ten. It was a tough session for the Williams Team with Kazuki Nakajima and Nico Rosberg both eliminated in Q1, and facing the prospect of starting the race from seventeenth and eighteenth places on the grid. It was an even worse result for the Torro Rosso Team with Sebastian Buemi and Jaime Alguersuari nineteenth and twentieth.
