Michael Schumacher drove a thrilling lap in this afternoon’s Hungarian Grand Prix qualifying session to take pole position for the first this year by a clear margin of 0.897 seconds. Rubens Barrichello set a time of 1 minute 21.158 seconds which will put him on the fourth row of the grid. The Ferrari pair has been looking strong all weekend and it is a welcome return to the top spot for the Bridgestone shod reigning World Champion and the Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro team after a season-long drought. Minardi’s Christijan Albers was next up for the Bridgestone runners, outpacing both his teammate and the two Jordan drivers. As the season has progressed, the two teams have become locked in a battle for position with Narain Karthikeyan next up on the qualifying time sheets ahead of Robert Doornbos and Tiago Monteiro respectively. Unfortunately Monteiro had an engine change prior to qualifying so he chose not to complete a flying lap.

Hisao Suganuma, Technical Manager of Bridgestone Motorsport, said: “An excellent performance from Michael, it’s good to see him back on top. We have done a lot of work over the past few months and that has begun to pay off today. It’s good to see the latest new compound working well and we hope to see it continue to perform well in the race tomorrow. Rubens will also be starting from a strong position and he should be able to benefit from the car-tyre package as he has been running consistently well all weekend. The Jordan and Minardi drivers have been working hard, too, so I expect them to be pushing the other teams ahead of them. Our tyres have the speed and now I would like to see our teams use that to run a fast, consistent race tomorrow.”

Ross Brawn, Technical Director of Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro, said: “We’re obviously delighted with the performance. It’s been a hard year and everyone’s kept working – particularly Bridgestone. We could see from the beginning of the weekend that we had a very strong tyre and we’re seeing the result of it today. It just shows we didn’t give up and we’ll do our best to repeat this performance tomorrow in the race. It has come about through a combination of factors as we have had new updates, a new aero package in the last couple of races and I think we’re seeing the benefit of it here. Michael also had a very nice lap and was happy with the balance of the car and we’re looking forward to the race tomorrow.”

2005 Hungary Grand Prix - Main Page

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