Schumacher on record 66th pole at Imola

Ferrari driver Schumacher set the standard in a time of 1:22.795 to break the record of three-time drivers' World Champion Ayrton Senna that has stood since 1994.

Honda's Jenson Button will join Schumacher on the front row with his Brazilian teammate Rubens Barrichello next up.

Schumacher's Brazilian teammate Felipe Massa will start fourth - ahead of World Champion Spaniard Fernando Alonso, whose Renault was next up.

Alonso's Renault teammate Giancarlo Fisichella was a high-profile casualty of Formula One's knock-out qualifying system.

Fisichella missed the cut for the top-10 shoot-out by just 11 thousandths of a second.

And his chance of regaining a top-ten spot were ruined when BMW's German driver Nick Heidfeld crashed heavily exiting the Rivazza corner.

With yellow flags forcing drivers to slow down at the third gear right-hand turn, and only 52 seconds of the session remaining, Fisichella was knocked out.

His loss was McLaren driver Juan Pablo Montoya's gain. The Colombian switched to his spare chassis after his race car suffered an oil leak in practice.

Montoya avoided a 10-place penalty because his race engine was also transferred to the spare car, and he just made the cut in tenth place.

BMW's 1997 World Champion Jacques Villeneuve, Williams Nico Rosberg - who was using his spare car after a practice crash - Red Bull's David Coulthard, Heidfeld, and Toro Rosso's Vitantonio Liuzzi were all eliminated at the end of session two.

There were no surprises in the first 15-minute session as Coulthard's Austrian teammate Christian Klien missed the cut for the rest of qualifying by over four tenths of a second in 16th.

Behind him, the other five drivers eliminated were Toro Rosso's American driver Scott Speed, the Midlands of Tiago Monteiro and Christijan Albers - who spun at Rivazza, and Super Aguri's pair of Takuma Sato and Yuji Ide.