Mercedes AMG had a great start to the weekend as Schumacher topped the timesheets on Friday's FP1 with Rosberg not far off, but at the start of Q1 struggled a bit and barely made it into Q2. After that Both Mercedes drivers easily made it into Q3 where Schumacher finished 5th and Rosberg in 7th place. Paul Di Resta in his Mercedes Force India finished 4th, but because of the 5 place grid penalty he received Saturday for a gearbox change he will drop to 9th, giving the Mercedes driver a 1 spot jump to 4th and 6th respectably.
The Mclaren duo of Hamilton and Button secured the front row, the big upset was Ferrari's favourite driver and championship leader Fernando Alonso. He topped the time in Q1 and Q2, but was unable to do anything in Q3 and will start in 10th place. He later said there was an issue in his car, but the mechanics were unable to fix the problem.
Full Qualifying ResultsAfter 0 of 0 laps
| Position | Driver | Team | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Qualifying Three completed. Fastest Lap - Lewis Hamilton 1.24.010 | |||
| 1 | Great Britain | L Hamilton | McLaren |
| 2 | Great Britain | J Button | McLaren |
| 3 | Brazil | F Massa | Ferrari |
| 4 | Germany | M Schumacher | Mercedes |
| 5 | Germany | S Vettel | Red Bull |
| 6 | Germany | N Rosberg | Mercedes |
| 7 | Finland | K Raikkonen | Lotus |
| 8 | Japan | K Kobayashi | Sauber |
| 9 | Great Britain | P Di Resta | Force India |
| 10 | Spain | F Alonso | Ferrari |
| 11 | Australia | M Webber | Red Bull |
| 12 | Mexico | S Perez | Sauber |
| 13 | Brazil | B Senna | Williams |
| 14 | Australia | D Ricciardo | Toro Rosso |
| 15 | Belgium | J d'Ambrosio | Lotus |
| 16 | France | J Vergne | Toro Rosso |
| 17 | Finland | H Kovalainen | Caterham |
| 18 | Russian Federation | V Petrov | Caterham |
| 19 | Germany | T Glock | Marussia |
| 20 | France | C Pic | Marussia |
| 21 | India | N Karthikeyan | HRT |
| 22 | Venezuela | P Maldonado | Williams |
| 23 | Spain | P de la Rosa | HRT |
| 24 | Germany | N Hulkenberg | Force India |
For Nico Rosberg:
"starting from sixth place here in Monza is a decent result from a tricky qualifying session today. I wasn’t happy with the balance of my car by Q3 and, although it started well, I then lost the right balance so I couldn’t improve my time.
I’m looking forward to the race tomorrow and I hope we can gain some positions."
Michael Schumacher:
"the team can be satisfied with our qualifying performance as we have performed consistently all weekend. Our car clearly suits this circuit more than at the last races, but we've had a couple of hiccups along the way in practice Our guys back at the factory and here at the track did a good job to sort out the problems and compliments to them. Solid points should be a realistic target for tomorrow.
The fact that I will start from fourth is another small positive point, because here the even numbers on the grid are probably the better start positions."
Ross Brawn:
"It was a pretty solid qualifying session for the team this afternoon. The key to the session was using the tyres in the correct way and getting them at their best for the timed laps. We could perhaps have squeezed a little more out of our package today in terms of pure performance, but our positions are close to our maximum at this circuit.
Yesterday's race preparation was, for the first time in a number of races, untroubled by poor weather so we were able to achieve a lot of good work on various fuel loads. Now, we will see how that translates into tomorrow's race.”
Norbert Haug:
"Fifth for Michael and seventh for Nico are better qualifying results than we had in the last two races and this should be a decent basis for the race tomorrow. Five Mercedes-powered cars in the top seven places of the qualifying ranking is a good result for our engine today."
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