Red Bull’s Mark Webber brilliantly claimed his first Formula 1 pole position after coming through a frenetic rain-affected qualifying session at the Nurburgring.
After on-off light rain showers ensured Q2 simply became a battle of survival for the grid’s top runners, dry conditions returned for the crucial pole shootout and Webber fought off competition from four other drivers in a nail-biting finale to secure pole at the 132nd attempt.
The Australian – who had shown his intentions for the weekend from the very first practice session when he topped the times – outqualified team-mate Sebastian Vettel for the first time, delivering a faultless final 1m32.230s lap to claim pole by just over 0.1s from Brawn’s Rubens Barrichello.
With the weekend-long chilly conditions in the Eifel Mountains region favouring RBR again as they did at Silverstone three weeks ago, championship leader Brawn may well be delighted with its qualifying result after its two drivers both made late jumps up the grid to sandwich the two Red Bulls.
Barrichello appeared particularly chuffed in the post-race press conference after outqualifying his championship-leading team-mate Jenson Button for the second successive race weekend, the Brazilian capping an impressive hour with a time 0.116s faster than the Briton could manage.
Button in turn sneaked ahead of other main title rival Vettel by a mere 0.007s in the closing seconds to head up the second row.
Lewis Hamilton and McLaren confirmed their astonishing Nurburgring progress by equalling their best qualifying result of a miserable season with fifth, the reigning world champion having even held provisional pole after his final run.
Even more surprising, however, was the sister car of Heikki Kovalainen netting sixth despite the Finn’s MP4-24 not carrying the same heavily upgraded aero package as Hamilton and the fact he earlier had clouted the barriers after sliding off in Q2.
But the shock of the session belonged to the upwardly-mobile Force India team, which made its maiden appearance in Q3 after Adrian Sutil had demonstrated his wet weather prowess to show up other more fancied runners in the rain-hit second stage.
The German then amazingly outqualified both Ferraris to claim seventh, Felipe Massa and Kimi Raikkonen having to settle for eighth and ninth respectively as the F60 struggled in the chilly and drizzly conditions
And to cap an session of notable ‘firsts’, the ever under-pressure Nelson Piquet Jr outqualified Renault team-mate Fernando Alonso for the first time in 27 attempts after finally making Q3 for the first time in 2009.
After the majority of Q1 had taken place in straightforward fashion, drizzle started to fall around the Nurburgring in the closing stages of the opening session which meant the drivers below the cut line at the time couldn’t improve on their final timed laps.
With the rain predicted to worsen, the remaining 15 runners were naturally keen to get on with Q2 as quickly as possible and queued up at the end of the pit lane before the green light to start the session was given.
However, as drivers jostled for position around the first sector in a bid to find some clear air it soon became clear it was too slippery for the slick tyres they had gone out on.
Several cars subsequently ran off the road – including Massa, who was lucky not to swipe the barriers after running too wide over a kerb.
However, while all drivers except Webber tip-toed their way back to the pits to take on intermediate tyres, Barrichello opted to play a waiting game back in the Brawn garage.
Then, as the drizzle began to ease again, the canny Brazilian went back out on slick tyres and set a lap far quicker than any one else was doing to guarantee progression to Q3.
By the time his rivals realised they had to follow suit the rain intensified slightly again, which set up a thrilling conclusion to the session as drivers gave it everything to try and make the top 10.
With Barrichello’s time remaining untouchable (1.3s clear) Piquet slotted into second and Sutil third, while Button, and the Ferraris, McLarens and Red Bulls all also managed to scramble their way to safety.
BMW’s Nick Heidfeld was one of the unlucky ones to miss out after dropping from eighth to 11th in the closing seconds, while a rare error in a pressure situation meant Alonso unusually couldn’t match Piquet.
The Spaniard was on a lap that should have been his fastest to that point, but touched a white line under braking for the chicane at the end of the lap and slid into the gravel trap
And while the double world champion expertly navigated his way out of trouble, he couldn’t find enough speed in his final lap to bring and brought up Piquet’s milestone.
Williams’s Kazuki Nakajima had bee the first to spin in the early stages of Q2 and eventually found himself in 13th ahead of Toyota’s Jarno Trulli.
But the Japanese driver can at least be satisfied with outqualifying team-mate Nico Rosberg after the German driver missed the top 10 for the first time in 2009 in 15th.
Two of the drivers with vested home interest had already fallen at Q1, with German carmaker BMW losing one driver with Robert Kubica (17th) and one of the grid’s five local drivers Timo Glock dropping out too (19th) – the Toyota ace having made several mistakes before that point.
With the drizzle having started before the end of Q1, both Glock and Kubica went out for final laps but were fighting a losing battle and joined regular Q1 victims Giancarlo Fisichella (Force India) and both Toro Rosso drivers below the cut line.
Sebastien Bourdais did nothing to help his chances of holding onto his Toro Rosso seat beyond this weekend as he slumped to the slowest qualifying time for the second time in three races.
With rumours having intensified at the Nurburgring that he is set to be replaced by new 19-year-old Red Bull reserve Jaime Alguersuari from Hungary, being comprehensively outqualified once again by rookie Buemi may now mean he has to perform miraculously in the race to save his F1 career.
The Frenchman was later moved forwards a place on the grid after fellow back-row-starter Glock was handed a largely academic three-place grid penalty for blocking Alonso in Q1.
German GP starting grid
1. WEBBER Red Bull
2. BARRICHELLO Brawn
3. BUTTON Brawn
4. VETTEL Red Bull
5. HAMILTON McLaren
6. KOVALAINEN McLaren
7. SUTIL Force India
8. MASSA Ferrari
9. RAIKKONEN Ferrari
10. PIQUET Renault
11. HEIDFELD BMW
12. ALONSO Renault
13. NAKAJIMA Williams
14. TRULLI Toyota
15. ROSBERG Williams
16. KUBICA BMW
17. BUEMI Toro Rosso
18. FISICHELLA Force India
19. BOURDAIS Toro Rosso
20. GLOCK Toyota*
*three-place grid penalty for impeding Alonso
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