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Home » Sports » Motor Racing
Button snatches second straight pole
Source: Agencies |
April 5, 2009, Sunday
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Print Edition
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JENSON Button clinched his second pole position in a row for the new Brawn GP team at the Malaysian Grand Prix yesterday while McLaren's world champion Lewis Hamilton could qualify only 12th.
The 29-year-old Briton, who won the season-opener in Australia last weekend on Brawn's debut as heir to departed Honda, will have Toyota's Italian Jarno Trulli alongside on the front row.
Toyota's Timo Glock and fellow-German Nico Rosberg, in a Williams, will fill the second row for what could be a wet and chaotic race that is scheduled to end in the twilight at the Sepang Circuit.
As in Melbourne, the grid again had an upside-down look with last year's big guns well down the pecking order.
The pole was the fifth of championship leader Button's roller-coaster Formula One career and the first time he had done it twice in a season. The Briton has already scored more points this year than in the past two.
An hour after qualifying had finished, torrential rain lashed the paddock with flashes of lightning across the darkened skies and thunder crashing around the circuit.
"We've got a lot of thinking overnight to put a plan together if it is wet," said Button, who took the first podium finish of his Formula One career at Sepang when he came third for BAR-Honda in 2004. "We haven't run this car yet in the wet so it's going to be interesting."
Toyota has yet to win a race since its debut in 2002 but Trulli, who finished third after starting in the pit lane last weekend, showed that it is closer than ever to the big breakthrough.
"Tomorrow is going to be a strange race probably because we are all expecting bad weather, and that can mix up a lot the results," said the Italian.
"We have a car to fight for the podium and then our aim eventually will be to win a race during the season," he added. "It doesn't matter if it is me or Timo."
Germany's Sebastian Vettel was third fastest and Button's Brazilian teammate Rubens Barrichello fourth in qualifying but both have penalties.
Red Bull's Vettel was handed a 10-place penalty for a collision with BMW-Sauber's Robert Kubica in Australia while Barrichello drops five places for a precautionary gearbox change after Friday practice.
Hamilton, at the center of a storm this week after being stripped of the third place he had gained from Trulli in Melbourne for "deliberately misleading" the stewards, qualified 13th but will start one place up the grid thanks to Vettel's penalty.
Champion Ferrari had a self-inflicted nightmare, with Brazilian Felipe Massa qualifying 16th after a team blunder in assuming wrongly that he had done enough to reach the second session. Teammate Kimi Raikkonen, winner in Malaysia last year, qualified ninth but starts seventh due to the penalties.
The top 17 in the first session were all quicker than Massa's 2008 pole position of one minute 35.748 seconds, with Renault's double world champion Fernando Alonso only just sneaking through.
The 29-year-old Briton, who won the season-opener in Australia last weekend on Brawn's debut as heir to departed Honda, will have Toyota's Italian Jarno Trulli alongside on the front row.
Toyota's Timo Glock and fellow-German Nico Rosberg, in a Williams, will fill the second row for what could be a wet and chaotic race that is scheduled to end in the twilight at the Sepang Circuit.
As in Melbourne, the grid again had an upside-down look with last year's big guns well down the pecking order.
The pole was the fifth of championship leader Button's roller-coaster Formula One career and the first time he had done it twice in a season. The Briton has already scored more points this year than in the past two.
An hour after qualifying had finished, torrential rain lashed the paddock with flashes of lightning across the darkened skies and thunder crashing around the circuit.
"We've got a lot of thinking overnight to put a plan together if it is wet," said Button, who took the first podium finish of his Formula One career at Sepang when he came third for BAR-Honda in 2004. "We haven't run this car yet in the wet so it's going to be interesting."
Toyota has yet to win a race since its debut in 2002 but Trulli, who finished third after starting in the pit lane last weekend, showed that it is closer than ever to the big breakthrough.
"Tomorrow is going to be a strange race probably because we are all expecting bad weather, and that can mix up a lot the results," said the Italian.
"We have a car to fight for the podium and then our aim eventually will be to win a race during the season," he added. "It doesn't matter if it is me or Timo."
Germany's Sebastian Vettel was third fastest and Button's Brazilian teammate Rubens Barrichello fourth in qualifying but both have penalties.
Red Bull's Vettel was handed a 10-place penalty for a collision with BMW-Sauber's Robert Kubica in Australia while Barrichello drops five places for a precautionary gearbox change after Friday practice.
Hamilton, at the center of a storm this week after being stripped of the third place he had gained from Trulli in Melbourne for "deliberately misleading" the stewards, qualified 13th but will start one place up the grid thanks to Vettel's penalty.
Champion Ferrari had a self-inflicted nightmare, with Brazilian Felipe Massa qualifying 16th after a team blunder in assuming wrongly that he had done enough to reach the second session. Teammate Kimi Raikkonen, winner in Malaysia last year, qualified ninth but starts seventh due to the penalties.
The top 17 in the first session were all quicker than Massa's 2008 pole position of one minute 35.748 seconds, with Renault's double world champion Fernando Alonso only just sneaking through.
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