NewsOnF1 - 2002 German GP - Qualifying Report

Michael Schumacher grabs his 4th Pole of the season and breaks Juan Pablo Montoya's Pole winning streak. Ralf Schumacher responds to his critics and takes second with Rubens Barrichello in 3rd ahead of Juan Pablo Montoya.
Kimi Raikkonen was 5th ahead of an impressive Giancarlo Fisichella. Olivier Panis was also impressive managing 7th ahead of Jarno Trulli.
David Coulthard only managed 9th ahead of Nick Heidfeld in 10th.
At the back, Alex Yoong failed to set a time within the 107% of pole time and thus doesn't qualify for the 3rd race this season. This will be a major setback for him.

The session started slow as usual. Alex Yoong was the first out on the track and set his first time in the 8th minute. Takuma Sato set the second time of the day 15 minutes into the session.
26 minutes into the session, Kimi Raikkonen took provisional Pole only for Ralf Schumacher to take it from him 2 minutes later.
Just after the halfway mark Barrichello betters Ralf's time only for Michael to go better. Montoya runs wide on his run and he moves into 5th.
Order after the first run: M Schumacher, Barrichello, R Schumacher, Raikkonen.

The second run saw Rubens Barrichello take provisional pole while Michael aborted his run after making a mistake. Ralf Schumacher improved his time but remained in 3rd while Juan Pablo Montoya moved into 4th.
On the third run, Ralf Schumacher took provisional pole while Michael Schumacher managed to get in front of his team-mate Rubens Barrichello. Montoya improved on his time but remained in 4th.
In the final 2 minutes the top 4 start their final flying laps and Michael Schumacher takes Pole position ahead of Ralf Schumacher who doesn't improve his time. Rubens Barrichello improves but isn't enough to move him up the order while Juan Pablo Montoya makes a mistake and aborts his run and remaining in 4th.

The top 3 are separated by 0.3 seconds, Montoya is over 0.7 seconds behind while Raikkonen in 5th is over 1.2 seconds behind Michael's Pole time.
It must be disappointing for McLaren after their strong showing in France to be that far off the pace.
The latest evolution of the Honda engine appears to be working well here with Fisichella and Panis qualifying in the top 10. Trulli after struggling all weekend in the Renault managed 8th.

Behind the top 4, the field is very close. Just 1.046 seconds separates Kimi Raikkonen in 5th and Mika Salo in 19th.

In the battle of the team-mates, once again Mark Webber out-qualified his team-mate Alex Yoong by the biggest of margins - 1.779. Eddie Irvine managed to qualify 0.544 seconds faster than his team-mate Pedro de la Rosa while Ralf Schumacher managed to out-qualify his team-mate Juan Pablo Montoya comprehensively with a margin of 0.538.
Closest were Allan McNish who managed to out-qualify his team-mate for the first time this season, the margin just 0.091 seconds. Frentzen only managed to qualify ahead of Bernoldi by 0.140 seconds while Olivier Panis had a 0.219 gap over his team-mate Jacques Villeneuve.

It is worth noting that both the Saubers and the Toyotas set faster times in practice than in qualifying.

Olivier Panis (7th) and Takuma Sato (12th) had their best qualifying positions this season. Michael Schumacher (1st), Ralf Schumacher (2nd) and Giancarlo Fisichella (6th) equalled their best qualifying positions this season.
David Coulthard (9th) and Mika Salo (19th) had their worst qualifying positions this season while Jenson Button (13th), Felipe Massa (14th), Mark Webber (21st) and Alex Yoong (22nd) equalled their worst qualifying positions this season.

Depending on the tyre situation, we could see Ferrari and Williams fighting it out however past races tells us that Williams are too hard on their tyres and Ferrari might once again not have any real competition.

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

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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