SPA-FRANCORCHAMPS, Belgium // Mark Webber, the world championship leader, will start the Belgian Grand Prix from pole position today after using a steady hand to gain a fractional edge as the capricious Ardennes weather added its customary spice to qualifying. The faster teams usually allow their less competitive brethren to clean the track at the beginning of a session, but this time - with rain imminent - every driver was dispatched to set a time while the circuit was still mostly dry. Nobody managed it before the skies opened, however, and in any case the session was swiftly red-flagged after Vitaly Petrov, the Renault driver, spun into the guardrail at Turn 9. Although intermittent showers subsequently threatened to conjure a jumbled grid, the final order had a familiar feel: Red Bull-Renault driver Webber led Lewis Hamilton (McLaren-Mercedes), Robert Kubica (Renault), Sebastian Vettel (Red Bull), Jenson Button (McLaren) and Felipe Massa (Ferrari). Of the five world title contenders, only Fernando Alonso (Ferrari, 10th) will start out of position. The Spaniard ran wide off the circuit while trying to improve his time at the end.
Webber set his decisive 1min 45.778sec lap on his first run. "We knew that would be a pretty important moment," he said. "The weather is always unpredictable here, but I think today has been unusual even by Spa's standards. I was pretty happy with the lap - and then it began to rain again, so I knew it was going to be difficult to improve." Nobody told Hamilton as much. The Englishman had the unenviable task of being first on the road at the start of Q3 - and found it hard to gauge the conditions. "It was hard to tell whether some of the dark patches were due to rain, or simply because the asphalt was a slightly different colour," he said. "I was a bit too cautious through Turn 14, because I didn't realise quite how dry it was, and that cost me some time." He made up for it with his second lap: the final rain shower was very localised, affecting only the first corner, but Hamilton then threw caution to the wind to get within one 10th of a second of Webber.
The opening moments of the race are likely to be crucial, particularly on the long, uphill drag from Raidillon to Les Combes, a popular overtaking spot. By reputation the McLaren has a straight-line advantage over the Red Bull, but there was little to separate them through the speed trap yesterday: Hamilton tripped it at 307.3kph, Webber at 306.2. Kubica's engine cut out after his first run - and although he managed to coast to his pit, the incident left him with insufficient time to return to the track. "I think it was a fuel pick-up problem," he said, "but I'm happy with third because it underlines that we have taken a positive step with the car." This weekend, for the first time, Renault have introduced an aero duct - the cockpit-mounted vent that allows drivers to stall the rear wing and increase straight-line speeds. They are later to the party than most - McLaren pioneered the system at the campaign's dawn - but Kubica was full of praise for Renault's engineers.
"It has worked well throughout the weekend," he said. "I'm not sure that we're in a position to challenge for victory just yet, but you never know." Michael Schumacher (Mercedes GP) will start 21st at the circuit where he first made his name as an F1 driver. Traffic compromised his quickest lap in Q2 to leave him 11th - and he must serve a 10-position grid penalty for the vicious chop he gave to Rubens Barrichello during the closing stages of the previous race, in Hungary. His team's hopes were further dashed when Nico Rosberg was hit with a five-place penalty for an unscheduled gearbox change: he drops from 12th to 17th. sports@thenational.ae