Alonso takes pole, Massa crashes

F1 Grand Prix, GP Hungary, Hungaroring

Fernando Alonso has seemingly taken pole position, ahead of Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber. The session ended in chaos as the timing system went down in the last three minutes of qualifying. Alonso hereby secures his first pole position of the year.

Track temperature at the Hungaroring is 41°C and should help Brawn to mount back to the front.

As the lights go green for Q1, Fisichella was already waiting to put the throttle down. Second on track is Alguersuari who improves the Italian's time by 0.7 seconds on his first attempt. Moment later, his Toro Rosso teammate Buemi goed a further second quicker, setting a 1:22.380.

Two minutes later there is plenty of action on the track. Vettel set the quickest time on the harder tyre, faster than Webber, RAikkonen, Rosberg and Hamilton. It will be interesting to see how Red Bull will cope with their problems on the super softs, later in qualifying and surely in the race.

Many drivers are going wide at different turns along the track, including Rosberg, Webber, Kubica and Kovalainen. Nelson Piquet hasn't gone wide anywhere but is nonetheless struggling to match Alonso, even though he now has the same updates on his car.

With one minute to go, Alguersuari stopped aside of the track and causes a brief yellow flag situation, causing some drivers to get into trouble. Alonso for instance passed the yellow flag and has to put in another attempt to get into Q2.

Rosberg meanwhile set the fastest time, quicker tham Hamilton and Webber. Less quick are both BMW Sauber cars who are both eliminated, as well as the Force India's and Alguarsuari.

Piquet appears to have found a special button somewhere as he put in a 1:21.278, three hundredths quicker than his teammate. The Brawn GP cars on the other hand are not comfortable and will have to find more pace quickly before the championship starts slipping through their hands.

Q2 kicks off with Raikkonen's first lap, closely followed by Trulli. 5 minutes later all drivers are out on track, except for Hamilton, Piquet and Alonso.

The frontrunners are again in the 1:20's with Rosberg fastest halfway through the session. Vettel and Webber are the only ones in Q2 so far who can challenge him.

3 minutes later Alonso has a clear track ahead of him and puts in a 1:20.885, only to improve that fastest time a little bit more one lap later on the super soft tyres. His 1:20.835 would have been good enough for P2 in Q1, marginally slower than Rosberg in the Williams FW31.

With one minute to go, Vettel improves on Alonso by lapping the Hungaroring in 1:20.604. Seconds later his teammate tops that again, a further 0.3s quicker. As the clock hits 0, Nakajima crosses the line with a third fastest time.

Massa has meanwhile crashed badly in the high speed turn 4 and has plunged deep into the tyre barriers. The accident kind of resembles Michael Schumacher's crash on Silverstone. Massa's Ferrari went straight out of the corner and fortunately the rescue workers are quickly there to help Felipe who is seemingly stuck in his car.

Replays show that Felipe started to slow down ahead of the corner but didn't turn in, simply going straight over the inside grass of the corner and then into the tyre barriers on the outside. It looks like a metal part from Barrichello's car hit his helmet and knocked him unconscious ahead of turning into the corner. The car did however brake heavily before it went into the 5 tyre thick barrier.

It is especially for these crashes that the HANS system was designed. Without such system we must not think of the consequences of this crash. Felipe is consequently moved to hospital by helicopter but looks to have regained consciousness.

With Q2 now ended, Buemi, Trulli, Barrichello, Glock and Piquet are eliminated. Q3 commences on 15:10.

Rosberg is the first to take the track again, ahead of Kovalainen.

3 minutes before the end of the session and with all competitors on track, Formula One's timing broke down and even after the chequered flag no one really knows who is on pole and which is the ranking for tomorrow's grid.

When the timing went down, Alonso was on provisional pole and hence is also the belief after the session.