Patronise F1

Italian GP. Qualifying Report. A last-gasp quick time from Lewis Hamilton gave McLaren the pole position for the Italian Grand Prix, and denied the Force India team a remarkable second consecutive pole, as Adrian Sutil was left to rue a tiny mistake on his final flying lap.

Once again, after Giancarlo Fisichella's heroics in Belgium, we were treated to the bizarre sight of the Force India car being a competitive prospect throughout the session. Sutil had been on a supremely quick lap on his flying effort before his last lap, but chose to back off in order to give himself track position for his last run.

Sadly, on that last run, he went in a little too hot at the first Lesmo, and dropped a vital couple of tenths. Although he crossed the line to claim provisional pole, Lewis Hamilton produced a searing lap behind him to claim his second pole position of the season.

Kimi Raikkonen managed third place for Ferrari, also achieving the dubious pleasure of being the only car in the top seven not to be powered by a Mercedes engine, as he lines up alongside Heikki Kovalainen in the second McLaren, with the pair of Brawn GP cars on the third row and the impressive returning Tonio Liuzzi in 7th.

The Brawn team seemed content with their position, with Ross Brawn revealing after the session that both his cars are on one-stop strategies for tomorrow's race, while they believe a number of the cars ahead of them will stop twice.

Fernando Alonso finished the final part of qualifying in 8th, in a weekend for the Renault team that is being overshadowed by the ongoing Fixgate scandal. He will be looking to improve his position in the early laps with his KERS device.

At the back end of the top ten are the Red Bull pair, likely to be heavy on fuel, but looking out of sorts throughout the session, and facing an uphill struggle to beat the Brawns in the race tomorrow, making Christian Horner's decision to brag about Button cracking under the pressure on the Saturday morning look all the more questionable.

Before Q3, there were some familiar names eliminated earlier on. Q2 was hectic, but saw both BMW Saubers take themselves out of contention before the second half of the 15 minute session, as both Nick Heidfeld and then Robert Kubica succumbed to engine failures. BMW, like Red Bull, look set for a nervous end to the year, with both their drivers now running near the end of their eight engine allocation for the season.

With two of the drivers to drop out after Q2 decided, then, the German cars were joined by Jarno Trulli's indifferent Toyota, Romain Grosjean's KERS-ed up Renault and Giancarlo Fisichella, who looked an awful lot quicker in his Ferrari than he had done in the practice sessions, but still never really looked like threatening the top ten places.

Q1 had already eliminated both Williams cars, the team looking dreadful around the Monza circuit and struggling for pace, and they will line up on the penultimate row, ahead of only the two Toro Rossos of Sebastien Buemi and Jamie Alguersuari. In a further poor advert for Toyota's engine power, Timo Glock was the fifth driver to be eliminated at the first hurdle.

Buemi may have had cause to challenge a moment of driving by the eventual polesitter during the session, when the Swiss man seemed to get blocked by Hamilton as the Brit emerged from the pit lane, but the good-natured Buemi just seemed to accept the incident.

And so, with no penalty looking likely for the reigning champion, Hamilton will begin tomorrow's race as the favourite, with his KERS power likely to give him a comfortable edge over his fellow front-row man Sutil, who will probably be more concerned about behind swamped by Raikkonen and Kovalainen from behind. With the Brawn pair heavy on fuel, though, it may well be a very close race.

* - Eliminated in second session
** - Eliminated in first session
+ - Given meaningless five place grid penalty for gearbox change