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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Salty25" data-source="post: 499085" data-attributes="member: 185281"><a href="http://www.formula1.com/results/season/2008/787/6482/" target="_blank">Official Qualifying Classification</a>The F1 circus began its 59th season at Melbourne, and by the end of session 1, headlines were already in the making.Just as Q1 was coming to a close, Kimi Raikkonen's car began to slow down rapidly on the in-lap, crawling to a grinding halt on entry to the pits. It was revealed moments later that Kimi would take no further part in the afternoon's action - fuel pressure problems condemned the Finn to 16th on the grid.Next up for the chop was another former world champion - Fernando Alonso could not improve on 13th in the 2nd session. It was clear evidence of the inferiority of the Renault machine that the man from Spain will have to conquer. Worse still, team mate Nelson Piquet Jnr. is on the back row in 21st.The business end of the afternoon did not disappoint. The loss of Kimi and Fernando earlier paved the way for fellow 2007 challenger, Lewis Hamilton, to take the first pole of the season. However, Lewis had a more than opportunist fight from the BMW Sauber's to fend off.Hamilton sent the benchmark going into the final moments of the session, when Robert Kubica came from nowhere to set an even quicker time. Rather incredibly, Kubica's momentary loss of the back end (traction control is out for 2008) in sector 3 most probably cost the Pole top spot, as Hamilton beat Robert's time by just under 2 tenths of a second.Kovalinen, now Lewis's team mate at McLaren, qualified in 3rd, just ahead of Felipe Massa in 4th. Heidfeld and Trulli, in a surprising quick Toyota, are a row behind them, while Nico Rosberg and David Coulthard are the 4th row pairing.Rounding up the top 10 are two comparative new boys to the Championship - Timo Glock in the Toyota, and Sebastian Vettel driving for Toro Rosso.</blockquote>

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