Button takes pole with perfect lap

F1 Grand Prix, GP Monaco, Monte Carlo Circuit

Jenson Button can add yet another pole position to his tally thanks to a perfect lap. He was just 0.025s faster than Kimi Raikkonen who appears to have found his second breath. Rubens Barrichello is 3rd, ahead of the quickest Red Bull of Sebastian Vettel.

The weather is great at Monaco at the time the lights go green for the qualifying session. Jarno Trulli and Timo Glock were already queing at the end of the pitlane to get started, eager to set a lap even though both Toyota's are in trouble since the very beginning of the weekend.

Only minutes later, Massa is in the pitlane with a broken nosecone. He apparently kissed the rails at 'La Piscine' after his rear wheels locked up under braking. There was only a very short yellow flag situation because there was little debris on he track.

10 minutes later, it's Hamilton making a mistake, albeit much more violent than Massa's incident. Hamilton also had some rear wheel locking after braking a little too late. He initially appeared to be able to recover but eventually hit the tyre wall with the left rear wheel, breaking the rear suspension. The session is immediately red flagged to get the car off the track.

Hamilton is 7th at the moment and he can only hope not too many jump over him. Felipe Massa for sure will attempt to do so. He is the first man out after the short 4 minute break. There are 8 minutes left on the clock in Q1.

The end of the session is again extremely busy with practically everyone out on the track. In the end, both Toyota's set the slowest times, a sharp contrast to their qualifying domination in Bahrain, only one month ago. Also out are both BMW Sauber cars who have also struggled all weekend, together with Lewis Hamilton who will be 16th on tomorrow's grid.

The fastest men in Q1 were Nico Rosberg, Felipe Massa and both Brawn cars. Lewis Hamilton has meanwhile just completed his walk to the pitlane. He still has his helmet on, often a sign of utter disappointment or anger.

Nakajima is then the first to run in Q2. 5 minutes later he is 5th while his teammate is again leading the field. Vettel is second, ahead of Raikonen and Massa. Will this weekend really become a restart for Ferrari as Massa promised?

2 minutes later Kovalainen is in the lead by setting a 1:14.809. Just after that Piquet spins but without harm. He does however block the session for a short while as it takes him a bit before he gets his Renault going again. Somehow it appears as if he didn't read the manual yet...

In the closing stages, Raikkonen managed to improve Rosberg's time with 0.3 seconds. Less quick are Buemi, Piquet, Fisichella, Bourdais and Sutil as they are done driving for today.

Q3 is kicked off by Sebastian Vettel who immediately proves to be a serious candidate for the pole position. After the first series of laps he is marginally ahead of Rosberg, followed by he Brawns and Webber in 5th place. The other 5 runners have completed their first laps on the harder tyres but are switching to the options.

When the clock hits 0s, Button tops Raikkonen for the pole. Barrichello is again the slower of the two Brawns but he still leads Sebastian Vettel, their biggest threat so far in the season.