By Sam Cooper
September 30 2007

The Vodafone McLaren Mercedes formula one team have completed today’s three part qualifying session in style. Current championship leader Lewis Hamilton snatched pole position from his vastly more experienced team mate Fernando Alonso in the dying seconds of qualifying. The two Ferrari drivers finished qualifying in 3rd and 4th.

Today’s qualifying session was fantastic, it was almost certainly one of the best qualifying sessions in the past two years. The unfamiliar Fuji circuit let Formula one’s minnows show what they could really do. Sebastian Vettel in the Torro Rosso actually got through to the third part of Qualifying for the first time this year.

The battle between the top four drivers was always going to be close, in Fridays second practice session the ‘big four’ were separated by a mere tenth of a second. Practice three was aborted due to wet weather and limited visibility, so a wet track could only add to the excitement that F1 so deeply needs after court cases damaged the sports integrity.

Due to this limited visibility it was unclear whether the qualifying session would start today, as the visibility on the circuit had improved from the mornings free practice session, however the visibility for the medical helicopter was poor. No announcements were made, until half a minute before the session was due to start, a Spyker came out of its garage, from here it was clear that the qualifying session would take place on Saturday.

At the start of the session the track was wet, within a few minutes of the session commencing it was clear that the lap times were going to tumble, because of this, the audience was provided with 22 formula one cars lapping the circuit as fast as they could do, as the key to this pole position would be to stay out and wait for the track to come to you.

The main gains were made by Honda driver Jenson Button and Torro Rosso driver Sebastian Vettel. Who normally qualify in the middle to the back end of the grid, because of the weather Button- who has been struggling with the handling of this years Honda- was delighted when he qualified in 7th place, and will move up to 6th because of Nico Rosberg’s engine penalty. Again due to Rosberg’s engine penalty, Sebastian Vettel will start a fantastic 8th position.

The main star of the show was pole sitter Lewis Hamilton, who skilfully timed his run to the last minute, optimizing the best possible track conditions for his pole run. Hamilton’s lap time was about five hundredths of a second faster than Fernando.

Times are shown below.