2008 Grand Prix of Singapore, Qualifying – Kimi Back to Top 3

| Saturday Qualifying – Massa Takes First Night Pole, Hamilton 2nd & Raikkonen 3rd

Felipe Massa took pole for Formula One’s first ever night race by a
huge margin after a dominant performance in qualifying at Singapore.

The Ferrari driver already held provisional pole after his first run
in Q3, but briefly lost the place to title rival Lewis Hamilton
(McLaren) in the closing seconds.

However even as Hamilton crossed the line, Massa was already on
course to comfortably beat his lap, setting new benchmarks in all three
sectors as he lapped in 1:44.801 to take pole by 0.664 seconds.

Kimi Raikkonen took third in the second Ferrari, and like Hamilton
the Finn survived some early scares to reach Q3, having been pushed
down into the elimination zone in Q1 being leaping up to first place in
the dying seconds. Hamilton only just hung on in Q2 as a scruffy lap
left him on the bubble in 10th at the end of the segment.

Robert Kubica claimed fourth for BMW, ahead of Heikki Kovalainen in
the second McLaren, with BMW’s Nick Heidfeld completing the top six.

Toro Rosso’s Sebastian Vettel followed up his Monza win with a competitive seventh place, alongside Toyota’s Timo Glock.

Williams showed resurgent form to get both cars into Q3 for the
first time all year. Nico Rosberg will start ninth, with teammate
Kazuki Nakajima in a career-best 10th.

There was massive disappointment for practice pace-setter Fernando
Alonso, who had gone into qualifying as an outside contender for the
front row following his rapid times so far this weekend. But the
Spaniard will start 15th after his Renault cut out with a fuel feed
problem before he could set a time in Q2, leaving Alonso visibly
devastated as he climbed out of the stricken car…(read full report here)

Pos  Driver       Team                 Q1        Q2        Q3       Laps
 1.  Massa        Ferrari              1:44.519  1:44.014  1:44.801  16
 2.  Hamilton     McLaren-Mercedes     1:44.501  1:44.932  1:45.465  14
 3.  Raikkonen    Ferrari              1:44.282  1:44.232  1:45.617  16
 4.  Kubica       BMW Sauber           1:44.740  1:44.519  1:45.779  18
 5.  Kovalainen   McLaren-Mercedes     1:44.311  1:44.207  1:45.873  19
 6.  Heidfeld     BMW Sauber           1:45.548  1:44.520  1:45.964  19
 7.  Vettel       Toro Rosso-Ferrari   1:45.042  1:44.261  1:46.244  15
 8.  Glock        Toyota               1:45.184  1:44.441  1:46.328  21
 9.  Rosberg      Williams-Toyota      1:45.103  1:44.429  1:46.611  17
10.  Nakajima     Williams-Toyota      1:45.127  1:44.826  1:47.547  20
11.  Trulli       Toyota               1:45.642  1:45.038            12
12.  Button       Honda                1:45.660  1:45.133            14
13.  Webber       Red Bull-Renault     1:45.493  1:45.212            12
14.  Coulthard    Red Bull-Renault     1:46.028  1:45.298            16
15.  Alonso       Renault              1:44.971                       6
16.  Piquet       Renault              1:46.037                       6
17.  Bourdais     Toro Rosso-Ferrari   1:46.389                       6
18.  Barrichello  Honda                1:46.583                       7
19.  Sutil        Force India-Ferrari  1:47.940                      10
20.  Fisichella   Force India-Ferrari  No time                        2

Yay, that was some fun night qualifying to watch! We finally get to see Kimi qualifying in the top three since the British Grand Prix. Boy that was a long time ago wasn’t it? Anyway, Kimi was on limit throughout the sessions today as we expected him to be, but Hamilton needlessly gave himself a tougher day after nearly missing out on the top ten for Q3. Soon after Kimi nearly lost it on the finish line, Hamilton touched the wall at one point! But what rotten luck for Alonso, who looked so strong all weekend up until his Renault let him down with some sort of engine/fuel related failure. It would have been really good to have Alonso in the mix up front, all the boys against that Hamilton would have been quite interesting for the race. But overtaking opportunity will probably be at it’s minimal says Kimi, so we have to be grateful that his qualifying wasn’t that bad despite the problem he had in the final practise session. He did very well to fight through the extra work. Third on the grid is a good position too, remember the start at Brazil 2007 last year? Kimi jumped straight past Hamilton and was on Massa’s tail. The humid temperatures definatly are working well for Ferrari, in fact it has probably saved their asses this weekend, Kimi’s at least. You can download the full qualifying press conference here and it’s quite funny because Lewis’s micrphone wasn’t working so all the sound was from Massa’s microphone – you can hear Massa drinking (not exactly pleasant to the ears) and the Ferrari drivers having a little chat at around 4 minutes and 18 seconds into the video, something along the lines of this:

Massa: How do you feel?


Kimi: Hmm?

Massa: How do you feel?


Kimi: *probably giving that cheeky smile*

Massa: *laughs*

…


Kimi: *mumbles a question to Massa*

Massa: *something* bit hard *something*


Kimi: Yeah? *mumbles something again*

Moving on…Massa’s qualifying lap was really smooth and tidy, but it helps me make the rather easy conclusion that he’s lighter than both Hamilton and Kimi. So…it’s that typical scenario tomorrow where Massa will try and run away and build a healthy lead from Hamilton, or Kimi if he manages to pass the McLaren at the start. Kubica and Heidfeld have Kovalainen to deal with further behind so I wouldn’t really worry about them, however this is Singapore and anything will most certainly happen anyway, what with accidents and the safety car. Hopefully before the race starts, the track officials/FIA will have sorted some issues out about the kerbs and some really bumpy areas which caught out a number of drivers today. We don’t want to see some unfortunate DNFs for nothing. We’re all for challenging corners and street circuits, but having your car damaged in a what should be a straightforward track process isn’t really ‘interesting’.

I guess I should mention the chances of team orders from Ferrari tomorrow. If Massa’s race goes to plan, and by ‘to plan’ I mean IF he can beat Kimi during the pitstops then the win should be the Brazilians without the interfering of team orders. But we’ve all seen time and time again how Kimi manages to turn his strategy of carrying an extra 1 or 2 laps of fuel, than Massa, into victories. So, if Kimi pulls off his usual race craft which is really, really fast then he has a shot at the win. Kimi will be going for victory, nothing less is in his mind. Massa just needs to keep outscoring Hamilton to take the title. He can do that by coming 2nd with Hamilton 3rd. I see no valid reason why Kimi must hand over 1st place to Massa in the current point situation. There’s 3 races to go after Singapore for any desperate team orders like Brazil 2007, so if Kimi has a chance to taste sweet victory again then Ferrari should allow him to do so. I guess this is where we’ll truly find out how Ferrari regard their world champion.

Let’s enjoy this one guys and girls, it’ll be a race to remember! Oh wait…we said that about Valencia too. Watch this space.

| Qualifying Team Quotes – Ferrari

Kimi Raikkonen – 3rd: "All things considered, this
is a good result. Of course, you always hope to be in front of everyone
but third place is not so bad. In Q1 and Q2, the car worked very well
on the soft tyres but in Q3, on the harder ones, it was not so good
anymore. Today, it was difficult to choose the best type of tyre for
the decisive session because the performance difference over the first
lap was not so great.

"I probably suffered a bit because of the time lost this morning
with a technical problem which ended my free practice session ahead of
time. The track is very demanding with many places where you really
feel the bumps and you have to maintain concentration all the time.
Tomorrow I will do my best for myself and for the team."

Felipe Massa – 1st: "I did a fantastic lap in a
fantastic car and it was possibly my best qualifying of the season.
Given my margin over the others, with hindsight it’s easy to say maybe
I could have run with slightly more fuel, but we firmly believe we have
a very competitive strategy. At every corner, at every braking point I
tried to get the most out of the car and I think I managed it.

"The harder tyres have seemed better since yesterday and that’s why
we went in that direction. The track is very difficult and requires
total concentration lap after lap because there is no room for error:
it’s much harder here than in Monaco. I’m pleased to be the first
driver to be on pole for this Grand Prix, taking place in such a
special and unusual atmosphere: I hope I can do even better tomorrow."

Luca Baldisserri: "It was an exciting qualifying
session, set against a really unique backdrop. On a track with so many
twists and turns, Felipe was the only one to put together the perfect
lap in Q3 and his gap to the others is the proof of that. Kimi did a
good job, given his set-up problems yesterday and technical issues this
morning which cost him a lot of valuable track time. Tomorrow, we must
not lose concentration for a moment because it’s going to be a very
long race full of potential pitfalls."
Press Conference Quotes

Q. (Sudhir Chandran – Chequered Flag) Question to you all, does
it matter at all to have a background of dark sky against the lights?
What kind of emotion does this cause: depressing, demotivating? What
difference is it compared to a nicely lit background?

FM: I think I just answered this question. I think when
you’re driving and you have the visibility, you don’t really care if it
is during the day or during the night, you just want to get the maximum
out of the car. I don’t know about these guys but that’s the way I
think.

LH: I barely notice it to be honest. For sure it’s
a unique feeling but it doesn’t make a difference in terms of driving
your lap because you’re looking at the ground in front of you, you
don’t particularly look up. But sometimes, after turn 13, you look at
the straight, you open your eyes and you see everything and it’s dark
but you can’t see anything there apart from a building maybe. It’s cool
but it doesn’t do anything to your emotions or anything.

KR: You don’t look at the sky, so it doesn’t make any difference.

FM: I hope we don’t look at the sky.

KR: The lights are almost as good as daytime, so it’s really normal.

Q. (Juha Päätalo – Financial Times Deutschland) Kimi, how happy
are you with your last lap and what do you think is possible for you in
the race?

KR: We will try the best that we can tomorrow. I think the
car should be pretty good in the race. The lap was OK but for sure you
could go faster but third place is not too bad.

Q. (Andrea Cremonesi – La Gazzetta dello Sport) Kimi, could you
describe what happened in practice three? You were quite nervous with
the marshals, and did the engine suffer in that situation?

KR: I don’t know. It got a little bit hot but it looks like
it’s fine. I just tried to show them to push me backwards because I
couldn’t select reverse but then once they pushed me, they helped me
because I couldn’t get a gear. We had an electronic problem with the
steering wheel. That was the only issue.