Alonso takes dominant pole at Monza

Alonso Monza Qualifying

Fernando Alonso leads a McLaren one-two after a dominant performance in qualifying at Monza. The Spaniard set the quickest time in all three segments of qualifying to takes his second pole position of the season and the 18th of his Grand Prix career.

The double world champion’s pole time of one minute, 21.997 seconds was only 0.037 seconds quicker than his team-mate Lewis Hamilton.

Turkish Grand Prix winner Felipe Massa lines up in third ahead of ‘Quick Nick’. The BMW Sauber driver did a fantastic job to beat one Ferrari – that of Kimi Raikkonen – and by starting on the second row (with P4), the German could possibly spoil the weekend for the Italian team in front of the tifosi in Sunday’s race.

Raikkonen was on his back-foot after a troubled start to his weekend. First he suffered a hydraulics problem in Friday’s practice session and then during the warm-up to qualifying, had a high-speed crash under braking for the Variante Ascari chicane.

The crash caused significant damage to his chassis so Kimi was forced to switch to the spare car in order to qualify. The Finn will start tomorrow’s Italian Grand Prix in fifth, three-quarters of a second slower than his team-mate Massa.

Robert Kubica lines up in sixth for BMW Sauber with Heikki Kovalainen and Nico Rosberg – seventh and eighth for Renault and Williams respectively. Toyota’s Jarno Trulli continued his great form in qualifying by beating team-mate Ralf Schumacher for the fifth time with ninth and it was a good result for Honda’s Jenson Button who managed to qualifying inside the top ten for the second time this year.

So it will be another McLaren versus Ferrari battle in Sunday’s Grand Prix. McLaren are looking very strong after a competitive showing in last week’s testing and a win on Ferrari’s home soil will be the perfect result for the team after suffering a stressful period of accusation in the latest series of the spy scandal that has rocked this year’s championship.

Ferrari really needs to strike back in their home race to prevent rival McLaren taking the main points in its quest for the world championship. But could Heidfeld spoil the day in the fast and competitive BMW Sauber? Sunday’s Italian Grand Prix will be a fascinating contest with cars travelling around 220 miles per hour!

Italian Grand Prix grid

1. ALONSO McLaren 1:21.997
2. HAMILTON McLaren 1:22.034
3. MASSA Ferrari 1:22.549
4. HEIDFELD BMW Sauber 1:23.174
5. RAIKKONEN Ferrari 1:23.183
6. KUBICA BMW Sauber 1:23.446
7. KOVALAINEN Renault 1:24.102
8. ROSBERG Williams 1:24.382
9. TRULLI Toyota 1:24.555
10. BUTTON Honda 1:25.165
11. WEBBER Red Bull 1:23.166
12. BARRICHELLO Honda 1:23.176
13. WURZ Williams 1:23.209
14. DAVIDSON Super Aguri 1:23.274
15. FISICHELLA Renault 1:23.325
16. VETTEL Toro Rosso 1:23.351
17. SATO Super Aguri 1:23.749
18. SCHUMACHER Toyota 1:23.787
19. LIUZZI Toro Rosso 1:23.886
20. COULTHARD Red Bull 1:24.019
21. SUTIL Spyker 1:24.699
22. YAMAMOTO Spyker 1:25.084

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