12/05/2006
NEWS STORY
Lewis Hamilton continued his fine run of recent form to take pole position for tomorrow's GP2 series race in Barcelona. The ART Grand Prix driver's lap of 1:32.372 was enough to knock Nelson Piquet Jr (Piquet Sports) off the top spot in qualifying and the championship, as the two points Lewis receives for taking pole puts him one ahead of Nelson in the race for the title. Lewis' team-mate Alexandre Prémat will start third on the grid.
Under glorious skies, this afternoon's session began apace with the majority of drivers using the opening laps to adapt their set-ups from those left at the end of this morning's wet practice session. One driver in the wars early however was Giorgio Pantano. The returning Italian ran wide and clobbered the barriers, bringing an early end to his session with five minutes gone, and requiring a plaster cast for a badly sprained arm.
With Pantano out of the running, a battle emerged at the head of the times between Nelson and Alex, with the Frenchman out-doing the Brazilian by 0.001 seconds. But Lewis, who had started every feature race of the 2006 GP2 series year from third position, was determined to improve. He set the fastest first sector of the session, but his lap was curtailed when Ernesto Viso ran wide and beached himself in the gravel at Turn Three, bringing out the red flags.
With just over ten minutes remaining when the session got back underway, Lewis was straight back out, and straight on the pace again. He put together a superb lap, and snatched pole away from his rivals, with Nelson improving to second, leaving Alex third. Gimmi Bruni will start fourth for Trident Racing, with Adam Carroll fifth for Racing Engineering and Michael Ammermüller sixth for Arden International.
With the top ten drivers covered by a second, and the top 20 covered by two seconds, qualifying was again a close-run contest, setting up the possibility for yet another exciting race tomorrow.
Lewis Hamilton – ART Grand Prix: "I try not to take any notice of the expectation; the only expectation I have is from myself… I don't need to do it for anyone else. I think that we're quick, and we just need to score as many points as possible, so from pole I think we should be able to do that."
Nelson Piquet Jr – Piquet Sports: "It's not like I'm a second behind, it's a tenth here, a tenth there. We're quickest in the two last sectors, so it's just the little details we have to look at; it's not anything that we know we're not quick at. We just have to look carefully into it and see where the time is."
Alex Prémat – ART Grand Prix: "I think the three strong people here are Nelsinho, Lewis and me, so we were all very strong in the session, but I think Lewis was maybe more lucky with the third set. I think it was really good with Nelsinho, Lewis and me, but I think I was the rabbit a bit all through the session, you know?"