NewsOnF1 - 2002 Brazilian GP - Qualifying Report

Juan Pablo Montoya took his first pole position of the season ahead of Michael Schumacher and team-mate Ralf Schumacher. David Coulthard, Kimi Raikkonen and Jarno Trulli made the top 6.

David Coulthard was the first of the top teams to grab provisional pole only for Rubens Barrichello to take it moments later. A minute afterwards, Juan Pablo Montoya bettered Barrichello's time only for Ralf Schumacher to even do better. Michael Schumacher however came out and managed to split the Williams.
On the second run, Montoya managed to take second away from Michael, Michael tried to reply and managed to get within 4 hundredths of a second off Ralf's time.
Montoya's third run was the killer as he grabbed provisional pole with a gap of 2 tenths to Ralf. Ralf failed to improve while Michael managed to squeeze between the 2 Williams.
On the final run neither Williams improved and Michael didn't have time to do a 4th run.

Behind this trio, David Coulthard managed to get the better of his team-mate Kimi Raikkonen who struggled with car problems while Jarno Trulli managed to put the Renault in 6th just 0.016 seconds behind Kimi Raikkonen. Jenson Button was impressive as well managing 7th fastest.

Rubens Barrichello in the F2001 didn't have the best of starts as he was penalised for ignoring a red light and exiting the pit lane by having his best time in qualifying disallowed. The best he could do however was 8th over 0.8 seconds off the pace. Nick Heidfeld in the Sauber was embarrassingly close to Barrichello in 9th with Mika Salo impressive once again in the Toyota making the top 10.

Of the cars beyond the top 10, Jaguar appear to have improved (or is it just the tyres) with de la Rosa in 11th and Irvine in 13rth. Both Honda teams run on Bridgestone tyres, their best was Fisichella in 14th with Villeneuve just behind him. Arrows who run the same engines as Jaguar but run on Bridgestone tyres were 18th with Frentzen and 21st with Bernoldi. This certainly indicates a tyre advantage for the Michelin runners.

The top 7 times from this year bettered Pole from last year with Juan Pablo Montoya beating that time by 0.666 seconds.

The field is very close here with just half a second separating the top 6, under a second separating the top 8 and under 2 seconds separating the top 18.
In the tyre battle, Michelin won pole and had 7 cars in the top 10 (and in the top 8).

In the battle of the team-mates, Mark Webber continues to out-qualify Alex Yoong comprehensively, the margin this time was 1.388 seconds, next it was Michael Schumacher out-qualifying Rubens Barrichello by 0.694 seconds however they were in different specification cars. The closest were Coulthard and Raikkonen with Coulthard just 0.03 seconds ahead while Jarno Trulli jut managed to edge out his team-mate Jenson Button by a mere 0.054 seconds.

It is clear that the Michelin runners have a definite and it will be interesting to see how the Bridgestone runners will shape in the race tomorrow.
In any case, with a field so close and with a possibility of strategies, expect a race as thrilling as Qualifying.

Click here for a more detailed analysis including the Also Ran award by the Quali-flyer
Click here of the Qualifying table for the drivers this season

Race starts at 2:00 PM local time. Our coverage starts at 1:30 PM local time.

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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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