Ferrari Right Back on Cours

After three consecutive McLaren poles, Felipe Massa returned Ferrari to the top spot after pipping points leader Hamilton. By MARK HUGHES

With a lack of dry running preparation time, as well as gusting autumnal winds and occasional rain showers, not to mention random red flags, this was perhaps the most challenging qualifying session to date.

With a combination of Magny-Cours' flowing, long-duration bends and recent aero mods to the F2007 (see Tech Focus), Ferrari was in resurgent form here. The difficulty in getting heat into its front tyres had gone, and its drivers suddenly had a car with a front end they could lean on. Only a heavier fuel load disguised the red cars' significant pace advantage over McLaren.

So Felipe Massa could take a lot of satisfaction from securing his fourth pole of the year after a flat-out duel with Lewis Hamilton's lighter McLaren, the matter decided by just 0.07sec. Felipe's performance up until then had been a little scrappy, with several moments at Lycee, the penultimate corner.

Consistently later than anyone with his downchanges into that tight downhill turn, he several times went just a little too deep. But on his first new-tyre Q3 lap, he was error-free. This was the pole lap.

A subsequent effort on new tyres was again a little scrappy. "With these tyres if you try to squeeze just a little more time by being more aggressive, you just tend to lose time," he said afterwards.

It was a sentiment with which Hamilton could only agree, after losing out through an over-commitment on his final new-tyre lap. "Up to that point I was 0.15sec up and I think I had the car for pole. But it was great fun fighting it out with Felipe like that."

There seemed very little disappointment in his demeanour and he clearly felt it was all still to play for. After all, his biggest title rival, team-mate Fernando Alonso, was back in P10.

On Fernando's first fuel-burning lap the gearbox failed, sending him limping back to his garage, where he stayed for the rest of the session. "I'll just have to pray for rain tomorrow," he smiled. A layshaft bearing had broken.

"We don't know yet if it was a batch problem or whether we introduced the problem in disassembling and reassembling on Friday evening," reported the team's COO, Martin Whitmarsh.

Kimi Raikkonen wound up third, 0.233sec adrift of his team-mate, another to make a crucial error on the lap that mattered, though he was particularly pleased with the big improvement in the car. "It's very nicely balanced now. I've got a good feeling about it." Fuel corrected, he was around half-a-tenth slower than Massa.

With Alonso out of the picture there was a big opportunity for one of the lesser cars to get onto the second row. This was a closely-fought affair, but the man stepping forwards was BMW's Robert Kubica, a great comeback from his Montreal accident.

"Renault is closer to us here than we are to Ferrari so they were our main competition. It was important to qualify ahead of them." Team-mate Nick Heidfeld was less happy, in seventh and 0.4sec slower (with around half the deficit accounted for by a heavier fuel load).

"The rear end was very nervous," he reported, "and at the first chicane it cost me a lot of time." Nick was carrying a back muscle cramp from Silverstone testing and at one point there was talk of him not racing.

Giancarlo Fisichella, in fifth, ended up the faster of the Renault drivers after trailing team-mate Heikki Kovalainen through Q1 and Q2. The R27 featured further upgrades here that appear to have brought it close to the pace of the BMW.

Fisi worked through the sessions tuning out understeer and by Q3 reckoned it was very well balanced. Kovalainen was hampered by a power steering problem that caused the car to pull hard to the left. "It made braking and turning in a bit difficult," he said. Under the circumstances sixth on the grid was a great effort.

Jarno Trulli did an excellent lap in Q2 to put the Toyota into the run-off and from there set eighth best time. Ralf Schumacher was seventh quickest in Q1 but not quite as competitive in Q2, the couple of tenths by which he trailed Trulli being the difference between getting into the run-off and not. He lined up 11th.

Nico Rosberg suffered an electronics-related gearbox glitch at the penultimate corner of his best lap, sending him wide and losing him a couple of tenths. Otherwise he would have qualified the Williams a couple of places higher than his eventual ninth. Team-mate Alex Wurz was within 0.2sec of Rosberg in Q1, but that still wasn't good enough to get him through to Q2.

Their pace in the practices suggested the Red Bulls would have been good bets to reach Q3, but David Coulthard's chances were blown in Q2 with yet another gearbox failure that left him 16th after failing to set a time in the session.

Mark Webber abandoned his first Q2 run after an error and made a smaller one at the fast chicane on his next attempt, leaving him only 14th. The Hondas showed improved speed, both Jenson Button and Rubens Barrichello reporting improved consistency, though the heavily revised R107's raw one-lap pace still wasn't good enough, leaving Button 12th, Barrichello 13th, separated by 0.177sec.

Scott Speed got his Toro Rosso through to Q2, team-mate Tonio Liuzzi - who'd been quicker all weekend - getting caught in traffic on his final run in Q1.