Sakhir, 14th April 2007

Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro secured a hat trick of poles with Felipe Massa taking his second consecutive pole position in seven days, after team-mate Kimi Raikkonen started from the number one slot in Melbourne. Again, as in Sepang last Sunday, the Finn will start behind the Brazilian in third spot and also again, Felipe will have a McLaren-Mercedes alongside him, this time in the shape of rookie Lewis Hamilton, the Englishman recording his first front start in his brief F1 career.

His team-mate and reigning world champion, Fernando Alonso starts alongside Raikkonen on the outside of the second row. It seems that at this point in the season, there is virtually no change to the pecking order among the teams and the third row of the grid is therefore an all BMW-Sauber affair, with Robert Kubica just ahead of Nick Heidfeld. Fortunately, despite a few rain drops around lunchtime, the predicted storm did not arrive. A tough race can be expected tomorrow, particularly as this circuit is hard on engines that endure a heavy duty cycle here, compounded by the risk of sand damaging engine internals.

Felipe Massa's name appears no less than three times on today's official qualifying time sheet, because it is at the top of the list, then at the bottom attributed with the "pole lap time" and then again under that for "fastest lap overall" these two last categories not always being the same as cars still have to run in the final part of qualifying with their race start fuel load.