Monza, 8 September

At the end of a very closely contested qualifying session, Lewis Hamilton took pole position in his McLaren for the Italian Grand Prix, with a fastest lap of 1.24.010. He will share the front row with his team-mate, Jenson Button, second in 1.24.133. Ferrari’s Felipe Massa produced a great performance to round off the top three with a lap in 1.24.247. Fernando Alonso however was very unlucky: having been at the top of the times in the first and second parts of qualifying, the Spaniard was unable to do a quick enough lap in Q3 because of a problem on his car, thus wiping out any hope of a pole position that was very definitely within his grasp. He was therefore the slowest of the cars in Q3 and starts from the fifth row of the grid in tenth place. Nevertheless, the fact that both F2012s have proved to be very competitive this weekend leaves the Reds optimistic for the race, that starts as usual at 14h00.