By Emma Aitken
March 22 2008

Ferrari claimed the front row of the grid all to themselves today with an impressive performance in qualiying. Kovalainen and Hamilton had to be content with taking thrid and fourth behind them. Hamilton seemed to have a few problems throwing his MP4-23 round the corners of Sepang.

McLaren could not put a dent in the superb form of the Ferrari’s who dominated this morning in Sepang.  Rain was threatened but never materialised as Massa came out in Q3 to claim his second successive pole in Malaysia. 

Through Q1 and Q2 Raikkonen looked like the man to beat but with a lap of 1m35.748s it was his little Brazilian team mate who finally did so. McLaren had to settle with the second row on the grid with Heikki Kovalainen out-qualifying his team mate Hamilton to start tomorrow’s race in third. Hamilton looked like he was having trouble with the balance of his MP4-23.

Fifth place looked like where he was going to end up until, in the final stages of Q3 he came out and got himself one place higher on the grid and will start fourth. Jarno Trulli proved once again what an impressive qualifier he is by finishing in fifth.  The BMW’s had thought they might have got themselves involved in the middle of the Ferrari/McLaren dog fight and would have been but for Trulli and Hamilton pulling out all the stops as Q3 came to an end.

Kubica finished in sixth and team mate Heidfeld will start behind him in seventh. Red Bull Racing showed yet again that this year’s car could be a great improvement on that of 2007 with Mark Webber going well to take seventh spot. Alonso came in by taking eighth and Toyota had a good day all round with Timo Glock completing the top ten.

Jenson Button will be encouraged yet again by the performance of his Honda. He only just missed out on getting involved in the top ten shoot out, finishing the day in eleventh. Given his lack of practise due to having to have his car re-built after it fell to pieces in free practise David Coulthard had to settle with twelfth which really wasn’t so bad.

Following on from him will be the other Renault of Nelson Piquet and then his team mate Barrichello. He ruined Fisichella’s chances of making it into the second round of qualiying by just nipping in with a lap that was 0.05s quicker than the Force India car. The Italian lines up in 17^th behind Rosberg.

After his first podium visit last week young Nico will be hugely frustrated to be down there but his FW30 suffered a hydraulics failure and he never managed to get his pace back. Surprisingly Sebastian Vettel could not replicate his fine practise form and will line up in 15^th tomorrow. 

1	Massa	Ferrari
2	Raikkonen	Ferrari
3	Kovalainen	McLaren
4	Hamilton	McLaren
5	Trulli	Toyota
6	Kubica	BMW
7	Heidfeld	BMW
8	Webber	Red Bull Racing
9	Alonso	Renault
10	Glock	Toyota
11	Button	Honda
12	Coulthard	Red Bull Racing
13	Piquet	Renault
14	Barrichello	Honda
15	Vettel	Toro Rosso
16	Rosberg	Williams
17	Fisichella	Force India
18	Bourdais	Toro Rosso
19	Sato	Super Aguri
20	Sutil	Force India
21	Davidson	Super Aguri
22	Nakajima	Williams