Lewis Hamilton took pole position for the ItalianGrand Prix at the Monza circuit in sunny conditions on Saturday. He was followed by team mate Jenson Button in second place making it a McLaren one tow with Felipe Massa of Ferrari in third place. This is the first time since the 2010 Canadian GP that Mclaren has locked out the front row of the grid.
Red Bull struggled starting second session with world champion Sebastian Vettel finally taking sixth place and team mate Mark Webber down in eleventh place. Following the top three is Paul Di Resta of Sahara Force India fourth – unfortunately a five grid place penalty means he will start from ninth position for tomorrow’s race.Seven times world champion Michael Schumacher is in fifth ahead of his Mercedes teammate NicoRosberg in seventh. KimiRaikkonen, Kamuyi Kobayashi and Fernando Alonso make up rest of the top ten runners.
Low downforce track of Italy was expected to be a good hunting ground for the Indian outfit; however, Nico Hulkernberg suffered from gearbox failure in the Q1 is expected to start at the end of the grid. Couple with penalty for Paul it is going to be little difficult for FI to gain mileage out of the last European Grand Prix of the season.
Fernando Alonso was expected to take pole during Ferrari’s home race but will have to claw his way up the field during race day tomorrow. It is suspected to that he might have suffered a mechanical problem at the end of Q3, after running strong for most of the Friday and Saturday. Narain Karthikeyan of HRT racing will start ahead of his teammate Pedro de la Rosa – mostly in twenty second position, unless there are further penalties before start of the race tomorrow.
We can expect a good race tomorrow if the conditions stay the same as McLaren are one of the few teams whose cars can use their tyres well at high speed circuits.
