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Michael Schumacher 
2001 Ferrari Die Cast 

2001 United States Grand Prix 
Qualifying Session 

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Qualifying Session Report - Results

Michael Schumacher grabbed his 10th Pole position of the season ahead of Ralf Schumacher and Juan Pablo Montoya. Mika Hakkinen was 4th ahead of Rubens Barrichello and Nick Heidfeld. (see update)

It was one of the closest qualifying sessions this season with provisional Pole changing between drivers with Montoya the first to claim provisional Pole followed by Hakkinen then Barrichello. Michael Schumacher's first attempt wasn't good enough but his brother Ralf Schumacher managed to claim provisional Pole from Barrichello. On his second run, Michael Schumacher took provisional Pole only for Hakkinen to better his time by a mere 0.002 seconds but in his 3rd run Michael Schumacher took Pole position for good.

The top 3 are separated by 0.278 seconds while the top 6 by 0.726 and the top 10 by 1.097 seconds making it one of the closest qualifying sessions this season.

The Williams pair of Ralf Schumacher and Juan Pablo Montoya were the best running Michelin's. The only other Michelin runner to make it in the top 10 was Jenson Button in 10th place. Rubens Barrichello who was looking good during the practice sessions failed to impress only managing 5th and over 0.6 seconds off the pace of his team-mate Michael. David Coulthard only managed 7th fastest behind an impressive Nick Heidfeld.
The Jordan pair of Trulli and Alesi have improved over their results in practice with Trulli in 8th and Alesi in 9th. Kimi Raikkonen and Giancarlo Fisichella were both expected to qualify inside the top 10 but both failed to do so managing 11th and 12th respectively.
Spanish sensation Fernando Alonso managed 17th place ahead of the 2 Arrows, a BAR and a Prost in addition to his team-mate Alex Yoong and this is his first appearance on this track. Jacques Villeneuve's nightmare continued suffering his worst qualifying ever in 18th place. (He started in Brazil '99 from 21st following a fuel infringement).

Tomas Enge managed 21st after going off on his third run and hitting the tyre barriers.

In the battle of the team-mates, the closest 2 were Trulli and Alesi with a mere 0.002 seconds between them. Bernoldi and Verstappen were also extremely close with just 0.009 seconds between them. Jenson Button managed to out-qualify his team-mate Giancarlo Fisichella by 0.137 seconds.
On the other hand Fernando Alonso out-qualified Alex Yoong by a massive 1.256 seconds while Heinz Harald Frentzen out-qualified Tomas Enge by 0.904 and Olivier Panis out-qualified Jacques Villeneuve by 0.889 seconds.

In addition to Michael Schumacher who equalled his best qualifying performance, Heidfeld equalled his best qualifying performances while Jean Alesi and Jenson Button had their best qualifying result so far this season. On the other side Jacques Villeneuve had his worst qualifying result so far this season.

It will be an interesting race tomorrow with pit strategy and tyre choice playing a crucial role in the race.

The session was run under mainly sunny skies and an average air temperature of 18 degrees.

Update: Mika Hakkinen qualified in 2nd place but was stripped off his best time for exiting the pitlane under red during the Warm-up session. He dropped to 4th.

Click here of the Qualifying table for the drivers this season  

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