Massa's Moment of Truth

The local hero secured pole for his home race but it was all part of a tactical masterplan to help team-mate Raikkonen for the race. By MARK HUGHES

Felipe Massa loves Interlagos. And he can drive the place too - really drive it. We saw that in 2004 when he stuck his Sauber on the second row, and we saw it again last year with his pole and dominant victory.

So he will have arrived here this year part-happy, part-sad. Happy to be back in his beloved backyard - and on a track that had finally had its bumps taken out. But sad because there would be an element of tail-gunner compromise about his weekend with team-mate Kimi Raikkonen in the title hunt.

Part of that compromise was running light in qualifying, lighter even than Kimi. That way the red cars might lock out the front row, but it would then be Felipe's job to try to hold the McLarens back as Kimi escaped. Assuming this worked, Massa's race was effectively ruined before it began. He was to take one for the team. But the payback was the adulation of another pole.

As it turned out, that was not a foregone conclusion. McLaren, realising in advance what the Ferrari plan would be, dared to run Lewis Hamilton almost as light. Combine this with the extra benefit McLaren got by running a lap later in the fuel burn before fitting its new tyres, and a super lap from Hamilton, and pole ended up being decided by only 0.15sec - in Massa's favour.

The flattening of the circuit's bumps for sure helped neutralise a key disadvantage of the Ferrari over the McLaren. But, in addition, the team had overcome the F2007's inability to work the Bridgestone super-soft tyre properly.

To get McLaren-bashing lap times it perhaps needed to retain slightly more downforce than McLaren - as evidenced by the fact that its usual straightline speed superiority was gone - but the key fact remained that, despite suggestion this was a McLaren track, the Ferrari was deep into the ballpark. Massa used his Interlagos panache to make maximum use of that.

But boy did Hamilton make Ferrari sweat. With a magically fast time through the twists of the middle sector - 0.2sec better than during his first run, 0.2sec better than Massa - he was marginally faster than the Ferrari overall as he completed the sector. All that was left was to attack the tight turn 12, Juncao, at the bottom of the long drag up the hill and onto the start/finish straight.

But for maybe the first time all season, he allowed his position in the title race - what could be lost rather than what was there to win - to colour his approach. He'd been mighty here on his first run, this time he was a little more conservative.

'I didn't want to lose what I'd gained,' was how he put it. As a consequence he was 0.1sec slower through the final sector compared with his earlier effort, and this let Massa off the hook. Crucially though, he was on the front row - ahead of both his title rivals.

Kimi Raikkonen was 0.24sec behind, third quickest on a fuel load just a lap heavier than Massa's, a lap lighter than the McLarens. It was debatable whether his Hamilton- compromised entry into turn four on his final run cost him as much as 0.24sec. But it certainly cost him something, as the Ferrari went in off line, got slightly sideways and ran over the outer extremities of the kerbing. This incident was the main talking point in the immediate aftermath of the session. He was beginning this lap just as Hamilton was leaving the pits for his out-lap.

The McLaren was well ahead of the Ferrari down the back straight but Kimi was travelling much faster. Lewis began to move across to the right of the track, as if getting on line for the corner, then pulled back across to the left. 'I was going to take the corner,' said Lewis, 'but I really would have screwed his lap, so I moved over back out of the way.'

Some interpreted his move as deliberate. If it was, it was extremely subtle and well-executed. Deliberate or not, it was close enough to have disturbed the airflow over the Ferrari. It also slightly unsighted Kimi, both factors in his entering the turn slightly too fast. In the fight for a world championship, such details could be crucial. Ferrari took the matter up with the stewards who informed the team they viewed it as a racing incident and would not be investigating it further.

Fernando Alonso was struggling badly here. He'd spent the Friday afternoon and Saturday morning practice sessions running a low downforce set-up on the McLaren, going in a completely different direction to Hamilton. But he simply could not get it to work. He reported the car to be difficult over the kerbs and was losing far more time in the tight middle sector than he was gaining on the straights.

In desperation he decided to make wholesale changes for qualifying, reverting to a much more Hamilton- like set-up. As such, he went into qualifying on a set-up with which he was not familiar. It showed too. His first run in Q1 - on the harder tyre - would not have been good enough to get him through to Q2! He had to revert to a set of super- softs and a second run just to get through - unheard of for a McLaren!

He dialled himself in better for Q2 and got through to the run-off with just one run on a set of the harder tyres. But despite then being fuelled much the same as Hamilton and on the super-soft tyres, he was almost 0.3sec slower in Q3.

There was a gap of over 0.5sec back to the chasing pack - which was led by Mark Webber's Red Bull. The RB3 was quick throughout the sessions, seemingly benefitting more than some from the flattening out of the circuit. Team-mate David Coulthard also made it through to the run-off , a couple of tenths behind and took ninth, just as in Q2. DC felt the tyres were inconsistent as the track rubbered in.

Loaded up with a lot of fuel, Nick Heidfeld was delighted with a lap in his BMW that netted him sixth, 0.15sec behind the lighter Webber. He'd only just scraped into Q2 after a huge slide at the fast, uphill Ferradura. 'I almost spun,' he said of the incident that necessitated a second Q2 run. Once through, he put together a great lap on his second new-tyre run. Like Coulthard, Heidfeld was struggling to follow the fast evolving track.

'Right up to Q3 I thought we had maybe gone the wrong direction on set-up. But the track seemed to come to us and it turned out okay.'

Team-mate Robert Kubica was lighter, but one place behind Heidfeld on the grid after a scrappy final run. 'I was behind Alonso. He let me by but I had to go to part of the track that put dirt on my tyres.' He then locked up into Juncao and understeered wide, ruining the already compromised lap.

Jarno Trulli, not for the first time this year, felt that there was something amiss with his allocated race Toyota and after Friday swapped to the T-car. With a typically excellent qualifying effort, he graduated comfortably through to the run-off and took eighth. Team-mate Ralf Schumacher, in his last event for the team, was mired in Q2, 15th overall. 'I just didn't get it right,' he summed up.

Nico Rosberg needed to transcend the Williams's level to get it into the run-off. The lap that stood as seventh quickest in Q2 was a special one. He couldn't however repeat it in Q3 once it was loaded up with fuel and oversteering strongly. That fuel load was good for 23 laps. New team-mate Kazuki Nakajima was 0.7sec slower in Q1 and was unable to graduate from there, having lost the balance he'd enjoyed during practice when he'd been much closer to Rosberg.

Rubens Barrichello was on great form throughout the weekend and for some reason was finding grip and balance from the Honda that proved totally elusive to Jenson Button. Rubens failed to get through to Q3 by 0.02sec and lined up 11th. Button was 0.5sec behind in 15th.

The Renaults had grip problems even if their balance was good, and Pat Symonds was satisfied that Giancarlo Fisichella's 12th fastest time reflected the car's potential here. Heikki Kovalainen had a disastrous Q1 lap that left him stuck there, in 17th. Locking up into Juncao - a common error on Saturday - cost him 0.6sec.

Toro Rosso got both its cars through to Q2 but Sebastian Vettel and Tonio Liuzzi were disappointed with 13th and 14th respectively. Both felt that their performances had been compromised by and front tyre graining.