Date:23/04/2006 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2006/04/23/stories/2006042308691800.htm

Sport - Racing : Motor

Michael Schumacher takes pole

IMOLA : Seven-time World champion Michael Schumacher returned to the fore by claiming a record-breaking 66th pole position here on Saturday for the San Marino Grand Prix.

Ferrari driver Schumacher set the standard in a time of one minute 23.431 seconds to break the record of three-time Drivers' World champion Ayrton Senna that has stood since 1994.

German Schumacher, who has won six times at Imola, beat the Honda pair of Briton Jenson Button and Brazilian Rubens Barrichello by less than two tenths of a second.

Massa fourth

He will now start first on the grid ahead of Button and former team-mate Barrichello. Ferrari team-mate Felipe Massa qualified fourth fastest. Ferrari's pair came out early in the final 20-minute session to decide the top-10 starting positions for Sunday's race and swapped the top spot between them before the rest of the major players took to the track.

But with the drivers scrambling for space on an empty track, nobody could touch Schumacher's time.

His Brazilian team-mate Massa will start ahead of Spain's World champion Fernando Alonso, whose Renault was next up.

Alonso's Renault team-mate Giancarlo Fisichella was a high-profile casualty of Formula One's knock-out qualifying system.

Fisichella misses cut

Italian Fisichella missed the cut for the top-10 shoot-out by just 11 thousandths of a second.

And his chance of regaining a top-ten spot were ruined when BMW's German driver Nick Heidfeld, 28, crashed heavily exiting the Rivazza corner.

With yellow flags forcing drivers to slow down at the third gear right-hand turn, and only 52 seconds of the session remaining, Fisichella was knocked out.

His loss was McLaren driver Juan Pablo Montoya's gain.

The Colombian switched to his spare chassis after his race car suffered an oil leak in practice.

Montoya avoided a 10-place penalty because his race engine was also transferred to the spare car, and he just made the cut in tenth place.

BMW's 1997 World champion Jacques Villeneuve, Williams Nico Rosberg — who was using his spare car after a practice crash — Red Bull's David Coulthard, Heidfeld, and Toro Rosso's Vitantonio Liuzzi were all eliminated at the end of session two.

There were no surprises in the first 15-minute session as Coulthard's Austrian team-mate Christian Klien missed the cut for the rest of qualifying by over four tenths of a second in 16th.

The results:

1st row: 1. Michael Schumacher, Ferrari, 1:22.795, 2. Jenson Button, Honda, 1:22.988.

2nd row: 3. Rubens Barrichello, Honda, 1:23.242; 4. Felipe Massa, Ferrari, 1:23.702.

3rd row: 5. Fernando Alonso, Renault, 1:23.709; 6. Ralf Schumacher, Toyota, 1:23.772.

4th row: 7. Juan Pablo Montoya, McLaren-Mercedes, 1:24.021; 8. Kimi Raikkonen, McLaren-Mercedes 1:24.158.

5th row: 9. Jarno Trulli, Toyota, 1:24.172, 10. Mark Webber (AUS) Williams-BMW 1:24.795. — Agencies