Michael Schumacher treated his home crowd to one of his 'wonder laps' this afternoon as he grabbed pole position with the second last run of the afternoon. His team mate Rubens Barrichello will start from the fourth row. 'Michael's capacity to reel out these perfect laps underlines exactly why he is World Champion,' said Mike Copson of Shell Global Solutions. 'We always try to provide the team with a fluid package that gives them the most strategic options in terms of power and efficiency but with laps such as those we saw this afternoon from the Ferrari drivers, we know that we can rely on their skills too.'
Following the sad death of Fiat President Umberto Agnelli on Thursday, Juan Carlos Perez, Shell Global Sponsorship Manager said, 'our thoughts are of course with the Agnelli family this weekend. It is true that Ferrari is like a family so we share the team's sadness at the untimely loss of this inspirational man.'
Pre-qualifying was a quick session. Button continued the speedy pace he set this morning with a lap of 1.28.8 but was subsequently eclipsed by Ralf Schumacher, Michael Schumacher and then Takuma Sato who set the eventual fastest time with a 1.27.691.
Just as in Monaco, Jarno Trulli was still hard on the pace this afternoon. 1.29.135 was a good lap, but not good enough to beat two of his colleagues who were still to run at that point.
Montoya came close with a 1.29.354, good enough for a provisional second position, as did Alonso who followed, just edging second spot with a 1.29.313. The first of the Ferrari cars was out next, Rubens Barrichello, who's tidy lap of 1.29.353 earned him third position for a while, one thousandth of a second faster than Montoya.
As the session times rolled in, it was clear that this was becoming one of the most hotly contested sessions of the year. One of the vastly improved cars was the McLaren. Although Coulthard was unable to take part in the second session as his car failed on the way back from his lap in pre-qualifying, his team mate Raikkonen clocked 1.29.137 to give him an eventual fourth on the grid - McLaren's highest start of the year.
Jenson Button, star of so much attention in the past few weeks, couldn't beat Trulli's time, failing by just over one tenth. Ralf Schumacher had fallen short of his team mate's time, leaving him in eventual seventh position and leaving only Michael Schumacher and Takuma Sato to run.
In short, Michael's lap was stunning. He lapped the Nurburgring in 1.28.278 - one of the fastest times of the day, and enough to blow Trulli's time away. The Shell-powered car was over 0.7 faster. Sato rounded up the day's running, with another good time, 1.28.986, the only other car in the 1.28's and good enough to give him his first ever front row start.
Schumacher is on pole with Sato alongside, Trulli will start third. Raikkonen is fourth, Button, fifth and Alonso sixth whilst Barrichello sits on row four ahead of Montoya. As always, the paddock will be alive with speculation as to the fuel loads of each car but with positions three to eleven all covered within a second, tomorrow's start will be crucial and the racing should be close.
