2009 Australian Grand Prix - Report - Practice and Qualifying

Practice and Qualifying

"In both sessions sector two was working particularly well. There are only two 'real' corners in the sector, but it's really interesting and it feels good in the car. The FW31 is well balanced all round the track, but seems even more so there than in any other places. After a winter of testing, it's good to get out on a new, fresh track and we seem to be in a better position than we thought."

Nico Rosberg, after topping the timesheets in both Friday sessions and his thoughts on how well the Williams FW31 was comparing against his rivals.

Three practice sessions were held before the race; the first was held on Friday morning and the second on Friday afternoon. Both sessions lasted 1 hour and 30 minutes with weather conditions dry throughout. The third session was held on Saturday morning and lasted an hour, and was also dry throughout. The Williams cars of Nico Rosberg and Kazuki Nakajima set the pace, ending up first and second with only five-hundredths of a second splitting the two. The only other driver that was within half a second of them was Kimi Räikkönen's Ferrari, who was marginally behind Nakajima. Rubens Barrichello set the fourth fastest time in the first official session for the Brawn team, outpacing team-mate Jenson Button, who could only muster up the sixth fastest lap. Heikki Kovalainen was the faster of the two McLaren drivers in fifth, with team-mate and reigning world champion Lewis Hamilton languishing all the way down in 16th, some 2.3 seconds off the pace of the Williams cars. Rounding out the top ten were Felipe Massa's Ferrari, the Toyota of Timo Glock, Adrian Sutil's Force India (thus meaning that four of the six Mercedes–engined cars were in the top ten) and the first of the Renaults driven by Fernando Alonso.

Rosberg was again the pace-setter in the second practice session, with a time some six tenths of a second faster than what he achieved during the first 90-minute session. This time, Barrichello was second in his Brawn with the Toyota of Jarno Trulli in third. This marked an improvement for Trulli as he was only 12th in the first session. The only Australian in the field, Mark Webber ended up fourth for Red Bull Racing, ahead of Button, Glock and Nakajima. Webber's team-mate Sebastian Vettel was eighth, after a morning session that was interrupted by a hydraulic failure which led him to pull his car off the road between turns six and seven. This ruled him out of the rest of the session, and restricted him to bottom of the timesheets and only four laps completed. Rounding out the top ten were Sutil's Force India, which ended up ninth again, and Massa in tenth. The three teams running the controversial rear diffusers (Brawn, Williams, and Toyota) were consistently the best teams on the track.

Rosberg completed a clean sweep of top spots in practice, by coming fastest in Saturday's practice session. His time edged out Trulli's Toyota by just three thousandths of a second. Button was third, and the only other driver to break into the 1:25 lap times, just under two tenths of a second behind Rosberg. Massa improved again to end up fourth, and be the only driver from McLaren or Ferrari to finish in the top ten. Nakajima again impressed in the Williams, finishing fifth, in front of Barrichello, Webber, and Glock, who took the next three fastest times and were split by around six hundredths of a second. The two BMW Sauber drivers—Robert Kubica and Nick Heidfeld—rounded out the top ten, as they appeared in the top ten on the timesheets for the first time, after a fraught pair of practice sessions on Friday.

"The last five or six months for both of us have been so tough because of going from not having a drive or any future in racing to putting it on pole here is just amazing, it really is and I have got to give all credit to the team and Ross and Nick for making this happen. This is where we deserve to be after the tough times we have had."

Jenson Button, after giving Brawn GP a debut pole.

The qualifying session was split into three parts. The first part of qualifying runs for 20 minutes and eliminates the cars that finished the session 16th or lower. The second part of qualifying lasts for 15 minutes and eliminates cars that finished in positions 11 to 15. The final part of qualifying lasts for 10 minutes and determines the positions from first to tenth, and effectively decides who starts the Grand Prix in pole position. After dominating all three practice sessions on Friday, and again on Saturday morning, Rosberg did not fare so well in qualifying, managing a time only good enough for fifth position. The Brawn cars of Button and Barrichello dominated qualifying with the Brazilian finishing first in the first two parts of the session. In the third session, Button managed to beat his team-mate's time by three tenths of a second, and secured the fourth pole position of his career and his first pole since the 2006 Australian Grand Prix, that ended with Button's car blowing its engine on the final straight. Vettel's Red Bull was third with team-mate Webber in tenth at his home race, which would later become eighth after the disqualification of the Toyotas. Kubica improved even further to line up fourth, easily outpacing team-mate Heidfeld, who did not make the third session and was running the KERS system, which Kubica was not. After Glock was demoted, Massa was promoted to sixth and was the best KERS runner, ahead of team-mate Räikkönen, with Heidfeld and Alonso completing the top ten, after the Toyotas' disqualification. After the session, Hamilton was demoted five places as his gearbox had to be changed, which originally dropped him from 15th on the grid, to 20th. Some hours after Hamilton's penalty, the Toyota cars had their times declared void as the rear wing on their cars was deemed to be illegal. This pushed Hamilton up to 18th, with Glock in 19th and Trulli 20th.