Hamilton on pole at Indianapolis

F1 Grand Prix, GP United States, Indianapolis Motor Speedway

Lewis Hamilton has again performed brilliantly with a solid drive to the pole position. Fernando Alonso is second but appeared to have the upper hand all through the earlier stages of the qualifying. Felipe Massa is third ahead of his teammate Kimi Raikkonen. Ferrari could not touch the McLaren drivers but still managed to stay ahead of the challenging BMW duo.

As the first session kicked off, temperatures are again very high and in fact the highest known so far in a GP weekend at Indianapolis. The track is as hot as 56 degrees Celcius with ambient temperatures 35. David Coulthard and Jarno Trulli are the first to come out setting times in the region of 1:13.000. 5 minutes later both Renaults are ahead of the pack. Although visibly faster than before, the French team still cannot match the three top teams. Q1 also proved the strength of McLaren who are 1st and 2nd ahead of BMW with yet again Vettel in good form.

In the back of the field, both Spykers and the Toro Rosso's are out, together with Sato and again Wurz who complaned about understeer in various corners.

Q2 is again an easy job for both McLaren drivers who are now on the softer compound. Behind them Ferrari appear to be the fastest, followed by both Renaults and BMW who are surprisingly slow in Q2 regarding their performance in the free practice sessions. Mark Webber and Jarno Trulli also just managed to get in the final session after last minute attempts.

Knocked out are Coulthard with an 11th time, followed by Ralf, Button, Rosberg, Barrichello and Rosberg.

For Q3, Hamilton is obviously not willing to change his strategy and is at least 3 minutes before the green light waiting at the pitlane light. Alonso on the other hand awaits for everyone to leave the pitlane in order to have a bit of clear track ahead of him.

The first string of quick laps turn out in the advantage of Hamilton who is 0.15s faster than Alonso. Surprisingly both Renaults and Trulli ran on the harder compound during their first flying laps. The positions remained the same at the end of the session after a bit of oversteer for Alonso and some mistakes for Massa.