NewsOnF1 - 2002 French GP - Qualifying Report

Juan Pablo Montoya continues his tunning form grabbing his 5th Pole position in a row just 0.023 seconds ahead of Michael Schumacher. Rubens Barrichello was 3rd 0.212 seconds behind with Kimi Raikkonen in 4th who managed to qualify ahead of Ralf Schumacher while David Coulthard managed 6th.
The Renault pair of Jenson Button and Jarno Trulli were 7th and 8th ahead of Eddie Irvine in the much improved Jaguar while Nick Heidfeld managed 10th and the best of the 'rest' for Bridgestone.

It was a thrilling session from the start with Rubens Barrichello going out after just 9 minutes and takes provisional pole. Just after 15 minutes into the session and Juan Pablo Montoya takes provisional pole. Michael Schumacher makes his first run just before the 20 minute mark but makes a mistake and runs wide on his third sector and only manages 3rd fastest. Michael's time then gets disallowed as he cut the last corner.
23 minutes into the session and Rubens Barrichello re-takes provisional pole only for Montoya to re-take it back a few minutes later.
Just after halfway through the session, Michael Schumacher takes provisional pole by just 0.059 seconds.
With 18 minutes remaining, Montoya on his 3rd run retakes provisional pole from Michael. Minutes later Michael improves his time on his 3rd run but fails to take provisional pole. Again he crossed a chicane in the second sector this time and his time was disallowed keeping him in 3rd.
With just minutes to the end of the session, Rubens Barrichello takes second on his final run then Kimi Raikkonen takes third on his final run while both Montoya and Michael were on their last runs.
Montoya clocks a 1:11.985 on his last run while Michael clocks a 1:12.008 and Montoya grabs his 5th Pole in a row.

There was drama for a number of drivers this session. Sadly Giancarlo Fisichella was advised not to take part in the session following his crash in the morning practice. Pedro de la Rosa only managed 2 runs and his car stopped on his 3rd while Mark Webber put a stunning first lap only for his his car to stop on his in-lap.
Neither Arrows driver managed to qualify but it appeared that it was a planned action where the 2 drivers went out early in the session, put slow times that were outside the 107% and went back into the pits. This way they have participated in the Qualifying session so they won't be excluded from the championship while failing to qualify which means they won't race until they sort out their financial crisis.

In the tyre war, Michelin had a definite advantage as 7 of the top 10 runners where Michelin runners and given the big improvements to the Jaguar, de la Rosa would have probably made it into the top 10 had he done all his laps.

With the exception of the 2 Arrows, the 2 Minardis and Pedro de la Rosa all the drivers completed their 12 allocated laps.

The top 6 are separated by just over half a second but the midfield is even closer with Irvine in 9th and McNish is 17th only separated by 0.761 seconds.

In the battle of the team-mates, Mark Webber was just under 2 seconds ahead of his team-mate despite having just a single hot lap. Eddie Irvine was 0.468 seconds faster than his team-mate although de la Rosa had only 2 runs while Juan Pablo Montoya was 0.439 seconds ahead of his team-mate Ralf Schumacher.
Olivier Panis just managed to qualify ahead of his team-mate Jacques Villeneuve by 0.049 seconds Mika Salo was only 0.112 seconds ahead of Allan McNish while Nick Heidfeld was just 0.131 seconds ahead of Felipe Massa.

Kimi Raikkonen (4th) and Eddie Irvine (9th) had their best qualifying positions this season. Technically speaking, Alex Yoong (19th) had his best qualifying position as well thanks to both Arrows told not to qualify and Giancarlo Fisichella not taking part in the session.
Juan Pablo Montoya (1st), Takuma Sato (14th) and Mark Webber (18th) all equalled their best qualifying positions so far this season.
Ralf Schumacher (5th) had his worst qualifying position while (again) technically speaking both Frentzen (20th) and Bernoldi (21st) had their worst qualifying positions.

With rain not expected tomorrow and track temperatures expected to be high, can the top Michelin runners be a match to the Bridgestone run Ferrari in race trim ?. One thing is for sure, they will be a lot closer than they were at Silverstone.

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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