Barrichello takes Monza pole

It appeared as if the Ferrari's would have a hard time getting on the front row, but Brazilian Rubens Barrichello drove a magnificent lap, making the difference in the second sector. He thereby is up 0.5 seconds on JP Montoya who is second. The gap is astonishing if you consider that all top 10 runners are within the same second.

Under a sunny sky, with track temperatures reaching 40°C towards the end of the session, all teams started rather confident after they had all been testing earlier this week on the Monza autodrome.

As could be expected, both Minardi's are in the back, with in front of them both Jordans. Remarkable there is the big advantage of Heidfeld on Pantano. Almost a full second splits both teammates, which is either a very good performance by the German, or a different race strategy for tomorrow's race.

In front of the yellow Jordan cars are besically the struggling teams, which have a rather big gap compared to the better teams in the top ten. The result is that Toyota and Jaguar share the sixth and seventh row between each other, while Sauber disappoints with 16th and 17th on the grid. Fisichella may however be on a different strategy than his teammate since he is only 0.048s in front of his teammate who lost some time in the first chicane due to late braking.

Behind the leading duo Barrichello Montoya a close figth took place with all drivers from 2nd to 10th position being seperated by only 0.5 seconds. 0.017 behind the Columbian there is M. Schumacher, who seemend to have made two small mistakes in his flying lap. The champion gets F. Alonso aside of him, who is well known for his cannon starts and is therefore likely to be a strong opponent in the first corner.

Close behind the spaniard are both BARs, a somehow disappointing Kimi Raikkonen who had the edge over the Ferrari's in prequalifying, Pizzonia's Williams, Jarno Trulli and David Coulthard, who lost a chance to be several positions higher in the third sector.

The results for tomorrow's grid are as follows. Note that Zsolt Baumgartner's time in provisional, since he cut the first chicane because of a driving error. It may well be that he'll have to start behind his teammate Bruni.