Massa heads Ferrari front row

Ferrari's Felipe Massa will start from pole position for the Malaysian Grand Prix for the second consecutive year, after lapping the Sepang circuit in 1m 35.748s in the final session of qualifying.

The fact that the Brazilian was half a second faster than team mate Kimi Raikkonen suggests that he was running less fuel, but either way the two of them seemed happy enough as McLaren's best runner was Heikki Kovalainen in third.

Raikkonen posted 1m 36.230s, Kovalainen 1m 36.613s. Lewis Hamilton was fourth, on 1m 36.709s, which was just enough to beat Toyota's Jarno Trulli, and the BMW Saubers of Robert Kubica and Nick Heidfeld, who were all closely matched on 1m 36.711s, 1m 36.727s and 1m 36.753s. You can bet that there are some fuel load discrepancies in there somewhere.

Mark Webber will start alongside Heidfeld on the fourth row, with 1m 37.009s, the stewards having agreed to let Red Bull's cars run after Friday's problems, while Fernando Alonso and Timo Glock share row five for Renault and Toyota respectively with 1m 38.450s and 1m 39.656s.

Q2 weeded out Jenson Button, who was nevertheless reasonably pleased with 11th fastest time for Honda of 1m 35.208s; Red Bull's David Coulthard on 1m 35.408s; Nelson Piquet on 1m 35.562s for Renault; Rubens Barrichello in the second Honda on 1m 35.622s; Sebastian Vettel with 1m 35.648s for Toro Rosso; and Nico Rosberg for Williams on 1m 35.670s.

The leading Q1 faller was Giancarlo Fisichella, who took his Force India round in 1m 36.240s. Kazuki Nakajima hoped for better than 1m 36.388s which left him 18th (but he loses 10 places on the grid for his incident with Robert Kubica under the final safety car in Australia).

Thus Sebastien Bourdais gets 18th place on the grid in the second Toro Rosso (1m 36.677s), having spoiled his chances of getting into Q2 by sliding off the road in Turn Four on his final run. The Super Aguris of Takuma Sato and Anthony Davidson were separated by Adrian Sutil's Force India. Sato lapped in 1m 37.087s, Sutil in 1m 37.101s and Davidson 1m 37.481s; they will start 19th, 20th and 21st respectively.

Altogether, it was an interesting session, with the indication that Ferrari have an edge, and that McLaren will be relying on the start again to stage a repeat of last year's success.

Malaysian GP starting grid

1. MASSA Ferrari
2. RAIKKONEN Ferrari
3. KOVALAINEN McLaren
4. HAMILTON McLaren
5. TRULLI Toyota
6. KUBICA BMW
7. HEIDFELD BMW
8. WEBBER Red Bull
9. ALONSO Renault
10. GLOCK Toyota
11. BUTTON Honda
12. COULTHARD Red Bull
13. PIQUET Renault
14. BARRICHELLO Honda
15. VETTEL Toro Rosso
16. ROSBERG Williams
17. FISICHELLA Force India
18. BOURDAIS Toro Rosso
19. SATO Super Aguri
20. SUTIL Force India
21. DAVIDSON Super Aguri
22. NAKAJIMA Williams*

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