Sunday, April 4, 2010

Disaster for Hamilton as Webber takes pole!!!



Mark Webber took pole for the Malaysian Grand Prix amid atrocious conditions which saw Lewis Hamilton exit at the first hurdle.
Nico Rosberg is also on the front row with Sebastian Vettel and Adrian Sutil behind.
With rain pouring down McLaren decided to keep their drivers back as qualifying opened and with the track worsening, Hamilton struggled.
He was only able to qualify 20th while team-mate and British compatriot Jenson Button will start 17th after becoming beached in the gravel despite reaching Q2.
Reigning world champion Button - the winner in Australia last week while Hamilton was left criticising the team over his strategy - was not alone in losing control of his car: moments before his slide Hamilton has a moment while Fernando Alonso suffered a violent triple spin as both Ferraris also failed to make it through to Q2.
They also made a hash of the opening segment, meaning Alonso will start alongside his former team-mate at McLaren and Felipe Massa will be behind them in 21st.
Conditions deteriorated to such an extent that the final mini-session was halted with just over seven minutes remaining.
After a break to allow some of the weather to clear, the leading drivers re-emerged on to the soaking track. Webber made the decision to go with intermediate tyres, a gamble which paid off as his time of a minute 49.327 seconds was over 1.3s faster than Rosberg.
The German again impressed with a late lap to outshine compatriot and Mercedes team-mate Michael Schumacher, who qualified eighth.
Red Bull's other driver Sebastian Vettel is on the second row alongside Adrian Sutil of Force India, who held top spot for the majority of the top-10 shootout. Vettel finished third after opting for wets.
Nico Hulkenberg put Williams fifth with Renault's Robert Kubica sixth ahead of the German's team-mate Rubens Barrichello.
Behind Schumacher Kamui Kobayashi secured a brilliant result for Sauber and Vitantonio Liuzzi made it two cars in the top 10 for Force India.
Q2 was not as incident-packed as the first session. With Button already consigned to the bottom rung in the middle order Timo Glock took an outstanding 16th for backmarkers Virgin while Lotus also had a memorable session, with Heikki Kovalainen ahead of him.
The Toro Rossos of Sebastien Buemi - who also had an off in Q1- and Jaime Alguersuari will start Sunday's race 13th and 14th behind Vitaly Petrov of Renault and Sauber's Pedro de la Rosa.
Amid the drama of the 20-minute opening mini-session Jarno Trulli was 18th ahead of Alonso while Lucas Di Grassi finished last after a late showing, with Virgin mechanics just managing to sort out his car in time to allow him a timed lap. Hispania duo Karun Chandhok and Bruno Senna start ahead of him.

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