Oh, there's gotta be pain and suffering in Maranello tonight, as McLaren took the front row at Ferrari's home race. The tifosi must be enraged by Raikkonnen's P5... "what, they couldn't be 3-4?"

Yes, after Alonso, Hamilton and Massa, Grizzly Nick got his BMW-Sauber in P4, followed by Kimi, the BMW of Robert Kubica, Heikki's Renault, Nico Rosberg in a Williams, and Jarno Trulli's Toyota.

WARNING: HONDA SIGHTING!

That's right, Jensen Button got his Honda into Q3... the first time, I think, all season that the Factory team has gotten that far in quals (of course, SuperAguri has done it a couple of times).

The rest of the grid:
11. Mark Webber Australia Red Bull-Renault 1:23.166
12. Rubens Barrichello Brazil Honda 1:23.176
13. Alexander Wurz Austria Williams-Toyota 1:23.209
14. Anthony Davidson Britain Super Aguri-Honda 1:23.274
15. Giancarlo Fisichella Italy Renault 1:23.325
16. Sebastian Vettel Germany Toro Rosso-Ferrari 1:23.351
17. Takuma Sato Japan Super Aguri-Honda 1:23.749
18. Ralf Schumacher Germany Toyota 1:23.787
19. Vitantonio Liuzzi Italy Toro Rosso-Ferrari 1:23.886
20. David Coulthard's Chin Britain Red Bull-Renault 1:24.019
21. Adrian Sutil Germany Spyker-Ferrari 1:24.699
22. Sakon Yamamoto Japan Spyker-Ferrari 1:25.084

Oh look! The B-Spec Spyker is... um... 21st and 22nd. Yeah, nice improvement to the car there, guys. Maybe if you'd concentrated less on flower arranging ability and making it able to direct a Broadway musical, and more on making it go fast, you'd've improved it a tad. Instead, you're over a half-second behind someone who crashed. Good jorb!

In other news from around F1, Suzuka will be back on the calendar! Starting next year, the Grand Prix of Japan will alternate between Fuji and Suzuka, with Fuji getting the race in '08, Suzuka in '09, and so forth. This pleases me to no end, since Suzuka's my favorite track (though Turkey is moving quickly through the ranks...).

While they've always said that Imola required a special aeropackage, so as to emphasize high speed/low drag rather than downforce, for some reason this year the difference seems much more pronounced than in the past. Take a look at the rear wing on the Toyota at Montreal (L) and Imola (R):

Oh, and finally, Kimi Raikkonen had a pretty nice wreck in the Saturday practice. It certainly looked like something broke from the way the car snapped hard-right just as he entered a braking zone, but Kimi claimed it was "driver error." Uh-huh, sure, Kimi. Whichever it is, the accident DID give me fodder for something I've always wanted to make:

Posted by: Wonderduck at 01:19 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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