Alonso Takes Pole In Germany

Fernando Alonso has taken pole position for the European Grand Prix at the Nurburgring. In an exciting session which gave us a battle between Alonso and his rival Michael Schumacher, the young Spaniard took his first pole for the 2006 season. Schumacher was close behind and emphasised the improvements made to his Ferrari, further confirmed by Felipe Massa who starts on the second row. Rubens Barrichello is now much happier with the way his car brakes and lines up alongside Massa. Jacques Villeneuve squeezed himself into the final knockout and drove well in the BMW Sauber to qualify 8th. Jenson Button had a difficult time in his Honda and could only manage 6th. The McLarens didn’t do as well as they had hoped, with Raikkonen finishing 5th and Montoya doing even less well. Kimi has an updated Mercedes engine in his car, but unfortunately couldn’t do much with it in this session.

Chaos reigned in the first session when a red flag was shown on the screens. This situation was radioed through to the drivers on track, and Christian Klien suffered as a result along with other teams. The red flag was shown in error as there was no incident on the circuit and after a few seconds, the clock started again.

As Martin Brundle said, “It threw a banana skin out there” and many teams were left feeling confused and annoyed. The second session was delayed while the race directors tried to resolve the issue, and Jacqques Villeneuve’s time was allowed. However, Klien was left in the drop-zone, much to the disbelief of team boss Christian Horner.

The second session provided no timing errors, and instead gave us some fantastic lap times that continued to tumble. Two big names that failed to make the top ten were Ralf Schumacher and Giancarlo Fisichella. The Italian was held up by Villeneuve’s BMW Sauber and Renault suggested it was as much as seven tenths. At the annoyance of the situation and the prospect of starting his second race in a row outside the top ten, Fisichella stormed into the BMW garage to have his say.

The final session saw Alonso and Schumacher battling it out for pole in an genuinely pleasing qualifying session.