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Fernando Alonso brought delight to the thousands of Tifosi as he romped to Ferrari's first pole position of the season at Monza. Alonso will be joined by the McLaren of Jenson Button on the front row. Alonso's team mate Felipe Massa came third in front of the Red Bull of Mark Webber. The events at Monza brought a temporary end to the Red Bull domination of Qualifying sessions this season and put the prancing horse firmly in the driver's seat for tomorrow's race. Championship leader Lewis Hamilton will start on the third row of the grid in fifth place.

Qualifying began at Monza with the promise of an intensely close battle between the top three teams. Vettel had raised quite a few eyebrows by stealing first place in Free Practice 2 yesterday, but Hamilton managed pip the German in FP-3 with a 1m22.498s lap. Vettel was however faster than both the Ferraris and the McLaren of reigning champ Jenson Button who was 5^th. Mark Webber encountered another technical snag which cut short his practice session for the second time in a row. He would however recover to start Qualifying.

The first session of Qualifying was however an all McLaren - Ferrari affair. The two teams traded the top spot repeatedly but Ferrari established their superiority as the session progressed. Felipe Massa eventually toppled his team mate Alonso's lap time with a 1m22.421.  The two McLarens followed the two Ferraris in 3^rd and 4^th while Red Bull took the 6^th and 7^th places behind the ever reliable Robert Kubica in his Renault. Michael Schumacher ambled to 13^th place to make it to Q2. The drivers that faced the axe after the first session were Trulli, Kovalainen, Liuzzi, Glock, Di Grassi, Senna and Yamamoto. Liuzzi the only surprise name on the list, a result of a technical snag.

Lewis Hamilton switched to softer tyres in Q2 and blitzed into the lead early with a 1:22 497. Fernando Alonso was quick to reply with a 1m22.297s as McLaren and Ferrari continued to dominate the top 4 positions in Q2. Button and Massa interchanged their positions from Q1  briefly as the Briton jumped ahead of the Brazilian into provisional 3^rd while Sebastian Vettel, who seemed to be out of the reckoning made a surge into 4^th spot but was still half a second behind the top two.

Button, however, took back 4^th place from Vettel as Fernando Alonso came out on hard tyres to again take provisional pole. Button made further inroads to take second at the end of Q2 while Lewis Hamilton and Massa slotted in 3^rd and 4^th. Mark Webber beat his team mate to finally move out from sixth place into 5^th. The battle for the last few places for Q3 intensified as a small battle emerged between former teammates Schumacher and Barrichello. Schumacher made a mistake on his penultimate lap but had the luxury of another lap, crossing the line with 30 seconds left on the clock. Barrichello however held on to his 10^th place as neither Schumacher nor Sutil were able to better the veteran's time.

Hence after Q2 Sutil, Schumacher, Kobayashi, Buemi, Petrov, Alguersuari and De la Rosa were relegated to the pit lane. Schumacher and Petrov the notable names in an otherwise predictable list, the result of the two Williams cars putting up a great performance.

The final 10 minutes started predictably as Alonso put in a scorcher of a lap. His time of 1m:21.962s remained unbeaten till the end of the session and was the only one below the 1m22s barrier.  Sebastian Vettel who had looked a contender for pole was 0.8 seconds off the Alonso's pace after his first hot lap while Felipe Massa was 0.4 seconds behind his team mate and looked good for an improvement after a change of tyres. Jenson Button made the big improvement in Q3 having been outside the top 3 for the whole of qualifying, he upped his pace in his final lap to finish with a time of 1:22:084 to take the second spot on the front row.

The big surprise of Q3 was Lewis Hamilton who couldn't get his act together in the final session. He ran wide on his first attempt while his subsequent attempts were nowhere close to Alonso's Ferrari. Hamilton's final attempt was only good enough for fifth place as Mark Webber pushed his Red Bull into 4^th place with a fine final lap.

Hamilton attributed his lack of pace in the final session to his decision to run without the F-duct.

I think potentially it had quite a big impact on the end result," said Hamilton. "I'm quite disappointed, I think, with fifth place. We chose to go with the lighter downforce level, which doesn't have the F-duct, and the car is sliding everywhere so I struggled quite a lot on each tyre and I just didn't have the downforce. Wrong choice, bit of a mistake, but we'll still push hard tomorrow."

Sebastian Vettel who had looked so good through all the practice sessions finished a disappointing 6th while Nico Rosberg came in a creditable 7^th in front of the Williams of Hulkerberg. Robert Kubica who showed great early promise could only manage 9^th ahead of the veteran Barrichello.

Ferrari have bounced back well from their recent off track controversies and are firm favourites for a win at Monza as both their drivers have the clean side of the track. Alonso was delighted and surprised with Ferrari's first pole since 2008

"I stopped in parc ferme and by radio they told me we were keeping pole position but there were still a couple of guys doing laps, and Button had a pink in middle sector.I thought in the end someone would arrive on the last lap and we would be second or third by a some hundredths of a second.Today was different. We remained on pole position until the end - a nice surprise, a much better feeling." Alonso said after earning his 19th career pole.

McLaren have been good throughout their weekend and Lewis Hamilton's non-performance in the final session was the only blip in an otherwise perfect weekend for the team in silver. Red Bull looked off pace and will have their work cut out for them as they find themselves in unchartered territory away from the front row of the grid. A Ferrari victory looks very likely to add further spice to an already mouth watering run up to the end of the Championship.

Time Sheet:

File Photograph Copyright: Slitz