Ferrari’s Felipe Massa took pole in Malaysia by three-tenths of a second from McLaren’s Fernando Alonso in a storming finish to today’s qualifying session. Their respective teammates, Kimi Raikkonen and Lewis Hamilton, will start tomorrow’s race from third and fourth on the grid respectively. BMW Sauber had another strong qualifying, with Nick Heidfeld fifth fastest and Robert Kubica seventh, while Williams enjoyed distinctly mixed fortunes with Nico Rosberg sixth and Alex Wurz twentieth after gearbox problems.

Renault showed no sign of rediscovering their championship-winning form as neither Giancarlo Fisichella nor Heikki Kovalainen made it through to the final qualifying session and will start eleventh and twelfth on the grid. Kovalainen, however, put a positive spin on the team’s performance.

Despite Renault’s poor day, Kovalainen was happy to bounce back from the disappointment of Melbourne.

“The grip levels were improving with every run, and I think we had the pace to get into the top ten this afternoon,” said Kovalainen. “But I didn’t manage to put my best three sectors together into one lap, so it’s a little bit frustrating to end up eleventh - and outside the final shootout.

“From a personal point of view, though, this was a much better qualifying session for me compared to Melbourne. I think our race will be with Williams, Toyota and Red Bull tomorrow - and I am optimistic that I can do a good job.”

Honda had another dismal qualifying, with Jenson Button fifteenth and Rubens Barrichello nineteenth.

Forsythe driver Paul Tracy has taken provisional pole position for this weekend’s Champ Car race in Las Vegas, ahead of Simon Pagenaud (Team Australia) and reigning champion Sebastien Bourdais at Newman-Haas. The RSPORTS duo of Justin Wilson and Alex Tagliani were fourth and fifth.
rb_drawing.jpg Somewhat unsurprisingly, Red Bull Racing are keen to establish how Spyker got hold of a design drawing which, Spyker believes, shows that the Scuderia Toro Rosso STR2 car incorporates parts that were designed or manufactured by Red Bull Racing. However, Toro Rosso boss Gerhard Berger has a simple (!) explanation for all this:

“He (Spyker boss Colin Kolles) still has to understand that we never denied we are working with Red Bull Technology,” the Austrian said. “It was always our intention to do [so] from the beginning on.

“Red Bull Technology was before Red Bull Racing Ltd, so they transferred the name, but there were always two different companies in place.

“Unfortunately before they had the same name, one was limited and one was not, but that is all formalities.

“At the end of the day there exists Red Bull Technology, call it what you want, that is where we get our part of our knowledge and that is the structure.”

Something tells me this one will run and run…