Nürburg, 21st July 2007

Lewis Hamilton had a lucky escape today in qualifying, when he crashed his McLaren-Mercedes in the "S" section after the hairpin. It was a heavy crash which the team later stated officially was due to a wheel-gun failure meaning that his right front wheel was not fixed properly. Fortunately, the English driver has no broken bones, but concern over his wellbeing naturally overshadowed the fact that Kimi Raikkonen took his second pole position of the season for Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro and the thirteenth of his F1 career.

It took almost half an hour for the track to be declared safe again after the incident, at which point there were just over five minutes to go. At the end, it was Fernando Alonso in the second McLaren-Mercedes who will share the front row with the Finn. In the second F2007, Felipe Massa put in a strong lap to take third place on the inside of the second row, which he shares with the BMW-Sauber of Nick Heidfeld. Next, in fifth place is the German's team-mate Robert Kubica, while Mark Webber completes the top six on the grid for the tenth round of the world championship, for Red Bull Racing.


With rules demanding that each driver has to use both types of tyre (essentially soft and hard) at some point during the race, much will depend tomorrow in the race on how well the cars are balanced, in terms of performing on the softer of these two options. So far this weekend, the F2007 seems to go well on both, which is an encouraging sign for the final outcome.