Kimi R\u00e4ikk\u00f6nen achieves his 200th pole position in Formula 1 at the 2008 French Grand Prix. He will have his teammate Felipe Massa alongside him on the front row.<\/p>\n
Lewis Hamilton finishes in third place for McLaren but ultimately drops to 13th on the starting grid due to his penalty after the pit lane incident with R\u00e4ikk\u00f6nen in Montreal.<\/p>\n
This allows Fernando Alonso (Renault) to take this third place. Jarno Trulli joins him on the second row after an impressive effort from Toyota.<\/p>\n
Hamilton’s teammate at McLaren, Heikki Kovalainen, and the current championship leader Robert Kubica (BMW) make up the third row of the starting grid.<\/p>\n
Although Massa dominated Q1 and Q2, it was R\u00e4ikk\u00f6nen who dominated Q3 from his first timed lap.<\/p>\n
When R\u00e4ikk\u00f6nen saw that Massa could not improve his time, the Finn chose to abandon his second run, rightly believing he had clinched pole position.<\/p>\n
Hamilton’s virtual third place is a good result after a mistake in the chicane at the Nurburgring.<\/p>\n
Behind Alonso, Trulli and Kovalainen, Kubica are in the top 6 despite difficulties in the first part of qualifying.<\/p>\n
The Red Bull drivers are seventh and eighth, with Mark Webber ahead of Coulthard.<\/p>\n
Timo Glock was the last to qualify for Q3 in the second Toyota and will start the race ninth.<\/p>\n
Nick Heidfeld still has difficulties in qualifying, despite his BMW being just 0.063 seconds slower than his teammate Kubica’s in Q2. The German will start 11th.<\/p>\n
Nelson Piquet was ousted from Q3 when Coulthard improved by a fraction at the end of Q2. He will be 11th on the grid.<\/p>\n
Sebastian Vettel, after superb practice sessions, was only able to achieve a 13th place, one place and 0.2 seconds better than his teammate S\u00e9bastien Bourdais.<\/p>\n
Nico Rosberg will start far behind as he is also facing a penalty. His teammate Kazuki Nakajima did not make it to Q2, he is only 16th.<\/p>\n
Hondas are ahead of the Force Indias at the back of the starting grid for this French Grand Prix.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Kimi R\u00e4ikk\u00f6nen achieves his 200th pole position in Formula 1 at the 2008 French Grand Prix. He will have his teammate Felipe Massa alongside him on the front row. Lewis Hamilton finishes in third place for McLaren but ultimately drops to 13th on the starting grid due to his penalty after the pit lane incident […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":43462,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,1749],"tags":[446],"class_list":["post-26034","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-f1","category-news","tag-grand-prix"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n