NewsOnF1 - 2002 Italian GP - Qualifying Report

Juan Pablo Montoya grabs his 7th Pole of the season ahead of Michael Schumacher and Ralf Schumacher. Rubens Barrichello was 4th ahead of Kimi Raikkonen and an impressive Eddie Irvine rounds up the top 6.

David Coulthard has a poor qualifying session and ended up in 7th but over 0.6 seconds slower than his team-mate while Pedro de la Rosa managed 8th ahead of Jacques Villeneuve in 9th (and the best non-Ferrari Bridgestone runner) while Mika Salo made up the top 10.

The session started slowly with Mark Webber going out on the 8th minute of the session. It took a further 12 minutes until another driver went out. After that it was pretty busy.

Kimi Raikkonen was the first of the top runners to grab provisional pole then Montoya went better with Ralf Schumacher slotting behind his team-mate. Michael Schumacher (and all the Bridgestone runners) opted for a 4 lap run and Michael grabbed provisional pole on his first run.

Michael also improved on his second run but Ralf Schumacher went even faster while Juan Pablo Montoya moved into second ahead of Michael. Rubens Barrichello was 4th.

On his 3rd run Juan Pablo Montoya managed to grab provisional pole, Michael Schumacher on his 3rd (and final) run failed to improve on his 1st and 2nd timed laps but had 1 lap remaining (as he aborted his second flying lap on his second run) and managed to split the 2 Williams for second.

2 minutes before the end of the session, Kimi Raikkonen on his out lap for his final run closes on Takuma Sato who was on his final flyer send him off the track. Both go off and crash into the barriers. Luckily neither of them are injured but the session is stopped to clear the track and repair the tyre barrier. At this stage the 2 Ferraris had no more laps left and the best grid positions they had was 2nd for Michael and 4th for Barrichello.

Upon the restart, Montoya and Ralf went out on their final runs but neither of them improved. Eddie Irvine however improved his time and ended in 6th place ahead of the McLaren of David Coulthard. It was the first time this season that a Jaguar managed to qualify ahead of a McLaren.

The Michelin runners had a clear advantage, in fact their advantage was enough to give Montoya Pole ahead of Michael Schumacher. 7 out of the top 10 qualifiers were on Michelin rubber.

The top 4 were separated by 0.442 seconds which will hopefully make for an interesting race. Raikkonen in 5th was a fraction under 0.9 seconds off the pace while Irvine in 6th was over 1.3 seconds off the pace.
The midfield however is very close with just 0.911 seconds separating Coulthard in 7th and Button in 17th!.

In the battle of the team-mate, Mark Webber managed to out-qualify his team-mate Alex Yoong by a massive 1.317 seconds. All the promise that Yoong showed in practice disappeared. Interestingly enough Yoong managed a better time in practice this morning!
Giancarlo Fisichella managed to out-qualify his team-mate by 0.651 and Kimi Raikkonen was 0.640 seconds faster than an embarrassed David Coulthard.
Closest were once again the Sauber team-mates with Felipe Massa getting ahead of Nick Heidfeld by a mere 0.036 seconds, Rubens Barrichello was only 0.185 seconds behind Michael Schumacher despite having very limited running time in the practice sessions and Allan McNish did a decent job being only 0.203 seconds slower than his team-mate Mika Salo.

Eddie Irvine (6th) and Pedro de la Rosa (8th) had their best qualifying positions so far this season while Juan Pablo Montoya (1st) and Jacques Villeneuve (9th) equalled their best positions.
Jenson Button (17th) had his worst qualifying position 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

Following an investigation by the stewards of the collision between Kimi Raikkonen and Takuma Sato, the stewards decided to strip Raikkonen from the best time he set in the session thus dropping him a place down to 6th and promoting Eddie Irvine to 5th - Story

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

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Second Friday Practice	Results	Report	Notes	Results
First Saturday Practice	Results	Report	Notes	Results
Second Saturday Practice	Results	Report	Notes	Results
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