kimi_australia.jpgKimi Raikkonen comfortably took the first Ferrari pole position of the post-Michael Schumacher era (to use that increasingly tiresome phrase) in Melbourne, ahead of McLaren’s Fernando Alonso and Nick Heidfeld in the BMW Sauber. Lewis Hamilton qualified fourth on his F1 debut, ahead of Robert Kubica in the second BMW Sauber.

Takuma Sato and Anthony Davidson qualified a startling tenth and eleventh for Super Aguri, however the other team at the centre of the “customer cars” row, Toro Rosso, could only manage eighteenth (Scott Speed) and twentieth (Tonio Liuzzi).

Felipe Massa and David Coulthard both had dismal qualifying sessions: the Ferrari driver stopped in Q2 with mechanical problems while the Red Bull driver qualified nineteenth, splitting the Toro Rossos.

iSport continued to dominate in GP2 testing at Paul Ricard, with Andreas Zuber topping the times and Timo Glock third quickest, split by Mike Conway for Super Nova. Racing Engineering’s Javi Villa was the surprise of the day, running second quickest in the morning and finishing the day seventh.