Alonso takes pole in Hungary

With the numbers tightening in the paddock, the qualifying session begins with a bang, as soon as the timer starts. The pilots Toro Rosso launch first and Sébastien Buemi achieves very good times, dropping below 1?22?? and almost ensuring his presence in Q2. Räikkönen and Hag take over at the top of the list, before the Finn sets a time which puts him back in the lead (1:21:500). The pilots Renault, at the end of the session, are virtually eliminated. And Jaime Alguersuari's engine failure, 90 seconds from the end of Q1, does not help the drivers ranked 16th to 20th. The yellow flag is waved for a few tens of seconds, before the drivers can again perform fast laps. The last one is the right one for Piquet and Alonso, who enter the top 10. The five eliminated are the two BMW drivers (Heidfeld, Kubica), the two Force India drivers (Sutil, Fisichella) and the Toro Rosso debutant, Jaime Alguersuari.

In Q2, Webber (1:21:067) and Vettel (1:20:964) lit the first fuses and marked their return to the front. But Fernando Alonso is competitive with the R29 and shows it, lowering the mark twice (1 then 20). But it was ultimately Mark Webber, on the momentum of his pole in Germany, who set the first time (885:1??20). At the very end of the Q826 session, Rubens Barrichello lost a piece on his car and cannot improve his time, being eliminated for the first time of the season before Q3. Same sanction for Sébastien Buemi, Jarno Trulli, Timo Glock and Nelson Piquet.

Felipe Massa, in a final fast lap in Q2, was hit by a lost part by Rubens Barrichello's car. Hit on the helmet, the pilot Ferrari loses consciousness, shoots straight into turn 4 and ends up in a wall of tires. If the impact is violent, ambulances are quickly on site to extract the Brazilian driver from his car. Evacuated to the medical center, Felipe Massa was able to speak with his engineer before being evacuated to the Budapest hospital. After twenty minutes of interruption, the qualifying session is restarted for Q3.

While the times come one after the other (Rosberg, Alonso, Hamilton, Webber) and the pole is close to being decided, the telemetric instruments jump. At the end of ten regulation minutes, Q3 ends without any driver knowing what place he occupies in the top 10. Fernando Alonso, credited with a best provisional time (1:21:569) a few seconds from the end of the session, goes to see all his rivals. The Spaniard, who hopes to have won pole, asks each driver the time he did, in order to know if anyone did better than him. After several minutes of uncertainty, the Renault driver can burst into joy. He definitely has the best time! Fernando Alonso is ahead of the drivers Red Bull, Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber. The pilots McLaren return to join the fight, with Lewis Hamilton 4th and Heikki Kovalainen 6th. Jenson Button is only 8th, behind Kimi Räikkönen. The Brawn GP, ​​over the weekend, continues to lose ground.