UpdateF1 >> Formula 1 News > McLaren dominate final session

Raikkonen crashes heavily

Fernando Alonso has again reined supreme at Monza as McLaren set a blistering one-two pace at the front. Alonso finished with a 1:22.054, just 0.166 ahead of team mate Lewis Hamilton

However the big news to come out of the session was the accident of Kimi Raikkonen, which severely damaged his Ferrari and brought out a red flag for 20 minutes. Raikkonen finished the session in 20th while team mate Felipe Massa piloted his scarlet car to third, some five tenths off of the pace.

BMW had a much improved practice performance with German Nick Heidfeld finishing fourth and a comfortable four tenths up on Robert Kubica in fifth.

Another pairing of cars was next as Nico Rosberg narrowly beat out Williams team mate Alexander Wurz for sixth position. The first Renault under the guidance of Heikki Kovalainen was next in eighth with the exact same time as Toyota's Jarno Trulli.

Australian Mark Webber rounded out the top ten for Red Bull as the Honda team put in a big improvement to grab 11th and 12th for Button and Barrichello respectively.

Rising star Sebastian Vettel was a surprise 13th in the unpredictable Toro Rosso while home town favourite Giancarlo Fisichella in the second Renault was in 14th, which is not that disappointing considering he finished only .2 behind his team mate.

The Super Aguri pairing of Anthony Davidson and Takuma Sato finished in 15th and 16th, with David Coulthard following closely behind in the final Red Bull car. Ralf Schumacher followed up his good performance yesterday with another poor one in the Toyota as he finished in a lowly 18th position, just ahead of Vitantonio Liuzzi in the second Toro Rosso. As usual the Spyker cars finished last with Yamamoto surprisingly beating Sutil.

Although finishing down the order may be disappointing for some drivers, there was only one second separating sixth to 20th in the order. This provides an exciting race for the final two points paying positions, providing Raikkonen has not damaged his engine for it to be changed.

Written: Sat, 08 Sep 2007 10:14:52