01/11/2008
NEWS STORY
Felipe Massa will start from pole position for the Brazilian Grand Prix after using Bridgestone's soft compound tyre to set a time of 1min 12.368secs at Interlagos. He was over three tenths faster than his next quickest rival, Jarno Trulli, who will join him on the front row.
Kimi Raikkonen was the third fastest and will be joined on the second row by drivers' championship leader Lewis Hamilton. Heikki Kovalainen was fifth fastest and Fernando Alonso was sixth. Sebastian Vettel set the seventh fastest time and Nick Heidfeld was eighth. Sebastien Bourdais and Timo Glock were the final two drivers to qualify in the top ten.
In the morning practice session Fernando Alonso topped the times with a 1min 12.141secs lap, set using the soft compound. Alonso was over seven hundredths faster than Hamilton, with Kovalainen the third quickest. Times were close, illustrated by the fact that the top seventeen cars were within a second of each other.
Today saw a discernable difference in weather between the morning practice session and afternoon qualifying session, with the afternoon warmer than the morning. Today's fastest lap time, a 1min 11.768secs, was set by Kovalainen using the soft tyre in Q2. Last year's pole time was a 1min 11.931secs set by Massa using the super soft compound. Massa also set the day's fastest lap time in 2007, a 1min 11.810secs, set using the super soft in FP3.
Hirohide Hamashima - Bridgestone Director of Motorsport Tyre Development: Congratulations to Felipe Massa for a stunning lap to give him pole position in front of a massive Brazilian crowd. This is his third consecutive pole position in Brazil and I'm sure he will be strong in tomorrow's race. Congratulations also to Jarno Trulli for qualifying on the front row for the first time since 2005. Tomorrow we should have an interesting battle for the championship as Massa is on pole and Hamilton has a very fast McLaren Mercedes, as was illustrated by Kovalainen's fastest lap in Q2. The circuit surface condition is better than it was yesterday, but we are still seeing graining. The key point in tomorrow's race will be who manages the graining phase of their tyres the best in order to get a strong result.