Patronise F1

Felipe Massa pulled an absolute snorter of a lap out of the bag to guarantee himself pole position for tomorrow's Singapore Grand Prix. He ended over half a second clear of his main title rival Lewis Hamilton.

The session didn't turn out to be as closely contested as many had predicted, but this was largely down to a combination of overconfidence, misfortune, and a truly stellar lap from Massa himself (unless he's only got four laps of fuel of course).

The first session was fairly incident free, save from a Giancarlo Fisichella masterclass in how not to impress your mechanics. Having broken his car in the morning warmup, Fisi's team had the car ready towards the end of Q1 for him to return to the track, only for the Italian to drive it straight into the wall again three corners in to his first lap.

Also out at the first hurdle were Adrian Sutil, who has never really got at this track, Rubens Barrichello, who has never really got going in the Honda, and Sebastien Bourdais and Nelson Piquet Jr, who have just never really got going.

Into the second part of the session, and the main entertainment was Lewis Hamilton's efforts to make it into the top ten. Having confidently sat out the majority of Q1 following his initial fast lap, he made a complete horlicks of his first flying effort in Q2, and didn't do much better with his second one, ending up having to watch nervously as he stumbled down the times, before settling in tenth place, escaping by the skin of his teeth.

Failing to gauge their efforts as well as Hamilton were Trulli, Button, Webber and Coulthard, who all left the stage at this point. Joining them, somewhat surprisingly, was Fernando Alonso, who had looked an outside bet for pole position before his Renault broke down in the early stages of Q2. Alonso ended his evening with a hand wringing moment of anger in the run off area, not exactly what he had planned.

The final part of qualifying was frantic, until Massa came along at the end to blitz the field with a 1:44.801, a stunning effort given his race fuel onboard, unless he doesn't have any. In which case it is slightly less impressive. Either way, he topped the times ahead of Hamilton, with Kimi Raikkonen and Robert Kubica making up the second row, both looking to somehow keep their limited title ambitions alive tomorrow.

Heikki Kovalainen ended up 5th, ahead of Nick Heidfeld, while the surprise packages that made it into the final session faded in the last rush, with Vettel ending the day 7th, ahead of Timo Glock, Nico Rosberg and Kazuki Nakajima.

All in all, the grid has a disappointing lack of wildcards in the top places, but it looks like the title fight will take centre stage instead.

* - Eliminated in second session
** - Eliminated in first session