NewsOnF1 - 2002 Belgian GP - Qualifying Report

Michael Schumacher grabs his 5th Pole position of the season and his first ever at Spa ahead of Kimi Raikkonen and Rubens Barrichello. Ralf Schumacher was 4th ahead of Juan Pablo Montoya and David Coulthard.

Michael Schumacher was impressive managing to qualify over 0.6 seconds ahead of his team-mate and Kimi Raikkonen was equally impressive qualifying ahead of his team-mate David Coulthard by exactly the same margin!.
Just over a second separates the top 6, Jarno Trulli in 7th is 1.6 seconds behind while Eddie Irvine managed an impressive 8th but over 2.1 seconds off the pace.
The margin between Eddie Irvine in 8th and Felipe Massa in 17th is just over 1 second.

The session started slowly as usual and it was only until the 17th minute that a car went out and that was Mark Webber. Soon after though all the cars went out and Kimi Raikkonen was the first of the top teams to grab provisional pole but a few minutes later Michael took it away from him. Given the margins between these two and the rest, it looked like a fight for Pole would be between those two.
Raikkonen improved his time on his second run but remained in second while Michael Schumacher aborted his run due to yellow flags on the track due to oil from Panis' car which suffered an engine failure.
Kimi Raikkonen went out on his 3rd run but failed to improve but Michael went out and bettered his Pole time.
On the final run Kimi Raikkonen improved his time but it wasn't enough for him to grab pole. Michael Schumacher went out but didn't actually complete a flying lap as he didn't need to!.

So while it is clear that the Michelin runners had an advantage today (9 cars out of the top 11 were on Michelins), their advantage wasn't enough to make a significant impact on Ferrari and particularly Michael Schumacher. Only Kimi Raikkonen managed to get ahead of 1 Ferrari (Barrichello's) while Williams who were expected to give Ferrari a tough fight failed to beat either of the Ferraris and only managed to be ahead of one McLaren.

Behind the top 6, Trulli managed to take the best of the rest comfortably ahead of Eddie Irvine in an improved Jaguar. Mika Salo was also impressive in the Toyota once again qualifying in the top while Jenson Button ended up 10th but compared to his team-mate he was disappointing just under 0.6 seconds slower than Trulli.

Most disappointing though were the 2 Saubers in 17th and 18th, particularly Nick Heidfeld who was 0.376 seconds behind his rookie team-mate Felipe Massa!.

Olivier Panis had to take the spare car for his 3rd and 4th runs after his Honda engine blew on his second run. Giancarlo Fisichella spun out into the gravel on his second run possibly due to oil on the track and had to continue his qualifying in the spare car.

In the battle of the team-mates, Michael Schumacher and Kimi Raikkonen out-qualified their team-mates Rubens Barrichello and David Coulthard by exactly the same margin (0.609 seconds). Mark Webber out-qualified his team-mate Anthony Davidson by 0.608 seconds!
Closest were Jacques Villeneuve and Olivier Panis (0.150 seconds), Eddie Irvine and Pedro de la Rosa (0.191 seconds) and Ralf Schumacher and Juan Pablo Montoya (0.286 seconds).

Kimi Raikkonen (2nd) and Eddie Irvine (8th) had their best qualifying positions so far this season while Michael Schumacher (1st), Pedro de la Rosa (11th) and Anthony Davidson (20th) equalled their best qualifying positions.
Felipe Massa (17th) and Nick Heidfeld (18th) had their worst qualifying positions so far this season.

Click here for the 'Real Race report' including the Also Ran award by the Quali-flyer
Click here of the Qualifying table for the drivers this season

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Session	2002			2001
First Friday Practice	Results	Report	Notes	Results
Second Friday Practice	Results	Report	Notes	Results
First Saturday Practice	Results	Report	Notes	Results
Second Saturday Practice	Results	Report	Notes	Results
Qualifying	Results	Report	Notes	Results
Warm-up	Results	Report	Notes	Results
Race	Results	Report	Notes	Results
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