Webber continues Red Bull dominance – pole in Belgium!

Mark Webber has clinched pole position for tomorrow’s Belgian GP at the Spa-Francorchamps circuit. The Australian who currently leads the Driver’s Championship with 161 points will start the race ahead of McLaren’s Lewis Hamilton and Robert Kubica from Renault. Webber’s teammate Sebastian Vettel filled up fourth place while the other McLaren ace Jenson Button secured fifth position.

Ferrari failed to follow through it’s dominance in practice into qualifying. The team which is back in contention following several disappointing races has Felipe Massa in sixth place. Rubens Barrichello who celebrates his 300th race is seventh for Williams ahead of Force India’s Adrian Sutil and teammate Nico Hulkenberg. Fernando Alonso only managed tenth place.

Both Mercedes drivers Michael Schumacher and Nico Rosberg are in 11th and 12th places respectively. Tomorrow will be a difficult race for both the Germans as they were given grid penalties. Schumacher will drop ten places following his dramatic and dangerous defensive move against former teammate Barrichello in Hungary. Rosberg on the hand received a five-place penalty after changing his transmission.

After losing out to Virgin at the Hungary GP’s qualifying session, Lotus has answered back with Heikki Kovalainen’s 16th place. Virgin is still doing well with Timo Glock’s 17th place. Jarno Trulli is 18th for Lotus in front of Sauber’s Kamui Kobayashi and the Hispania duo of Bruno Senna and Sakon Yamamoto. Sauber’s Pedro de la Rosa, Virgin’s Lucas di Grassi and finally Renault’s Vitaly Petrov make up the back end of the grid.

It was an exciting qualifying session as rain began to pour seconds after the green flag was drawn for Q1. All drivers were on dry weather tires and some including Petrov spun off track. The incident involving Petrov caused a temporary red flag and forced the drivers to get back into the pits. Minutes later the session restarted, this time the cars were fitted with wet weather tires. On the restart all contenders raced each other to make full use of the available dry track, fearing a full wet track.

Lap times started to tumble down as the rain stopped and made way for a dryer track. At one point Schumacher set the quickest time although seconds later Vettel snatched it away. Ultimately Webber came out on top and he is set to increase his Driver’s Championship lead tomorrow. The Belgian GP is often regarded as the best grand prix track with a good combination of slow, medium and high speed corners and straights. It is also famous for hosting a race that is dry on certain sections and wet on other sections. A good dose of wheel-to-wheel racing is expected to take place tomorrow!

Full results can be viewed here.

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