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Ferrari’s Fernando Alonso will start on pole for Sunday’s Italian Grand Prix, ending Red Bull’s dominance this Formula One season.
Mark Webber was fourth fastest and Sebastian Vettel sixth for Red Bull whose cars had taken pole in 12 of the first 13 races.
Second fastest qualifier was reigning world champion Jenson Button in a McLaren followed by Alonso’s teammate Felipe Massa.
Alonso, a two-time former champion, is placed fifth in the driver’s standings, 41 points behind championship leader Lewis Hamilton who starts fifth alongside Vettel.
di Monza.
“It’s a fantastic place, to have pole position in Italy for Ferrari,” said Alonso, who was the only driver to break the 1:22 barrier in a relatively predictable qualifying session that saw the trio of leading teams battling for supremacy.
It was Alonso’s maiden pole for Ferrari, the 19th of his career and the team’s first pole in 30 races since 2008.
The Spaniard added: “It was a nice surprise. When I stopped in parc ferme and they say on the radio, ‘you are first, but Jenson is pink in the second sector’, I thought we would be second. But today was different.”
Button equally happy: It’s the first time on the front row this season so a step forward. It’s a good start and hopefully it will be a competitive race.
On another beautiful day in northern Italy, with the track temperature at 39 degrees Celsius and the air on 26 degrees, the Ferrari garage was the centre of the photographers’ attention before qualifying began as the film star Hugh Grant joined Ferrari president Luca di Montezemolo in the team’s garage.
The first mini-session was predictable enough with the usual suspects topping the times – the two Ferraris and the two McLarens – and the usual suspects at the other end of the pit-lane falling out of contention.
Those eliminated were the two Lotus men Italian Jarno Trulli and Finn Heikki Kovalainen, followed by Force India’s Italian Vitantonio Liuzzi, German Timo Glock and his Virgin team-mate Brazilian Lucas di Grassi and the two Hispania drivers Brazilian Bruno Senna and Japanese Sakon Yamamoto.
The Q1 was notable, too, for an incident in which Russian Vitaly Petrov drove out of the pit lane and directly into the path of Glock, a mistake which was the subject of a stewards’ inquiry.
In Q2, it was much more of the same with, sadly, but interestingly, the sight of the seven-times champion and Ferrari legend Michael Schumacher being knocked out in 12th spot and failing to make the top ten shootout for Mercedes.
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