THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
SEPANG, Malaysia — Ferrari claimed the front two spots on the grid for the Malaysian Grand Prix, with Felipe Massa snatching pole position in Saturday qualifying ahead of teammate Kimi Raikkonen.
Title rival McLaren filled the second row, with Heikki Kovalainen ahead of Lewis Hamilton, who won the season-opening race in Australia last weekend.
The remainder of the top 10 were Jarno Trulli of Toyota followed by the BMW Sauber pair of Robert Kubica and Nick Heidfeld, then Mark Webber of Red Bull, Fernando Alonso of Renault and Toyota’s Timo Glock.
It was the second straight year Massa claimed pole at Sepang, with his time of 1:35.748 almost half a second ahead of Raikkonen, suggesting the Brazilian was running a lighter fuel load and will pit earlier in Sunday’s race.
Kovalainen was four-tenths of a second behind Raikkonen, with another tenth back to Hamilton.
It was a boost for Ferrari after its worst start to a season since 1992 in Australia last week. Massa started at fourth on the grid in Melbourne but retired on the 30th lap and Raikkonen moved up from 15th on the grid to third before encountering difficulty and eventually retiring five laps from the end.
Raikkonen picked up one championship point when he was classified in eighth place in Australia.
"Our championship is starting now," Massa said after qualifying. "What happened in the last race was incredible.
"Now we can manage to put everything together to have a very consistent, good and quick championship."
Kovalainen appeared downbeat after qualifying, accepting that Ferrari had a superior pace.
"We were hoping to do a couple of places better, but Ferrari have been very fast all weekend. We had nothing more to give — third place was the best we could achieve today.
"We didn’t see the true pace of Ferrari in Melbourne. This is more representative a read between the pace of the teams. By no means the game is over. It’s a case of attacking and see what we can do."
Rain threatened throughout the session Saturday, but there were only a few spots. There was rain forecast for race day Sunday.
Those eliminated in the second session were Williams’ Nico Rosberg — who had a hydraulic leak in Saturday practice — the Honda pair of Jenson Button and Rubens Barrichello, Renault’s Nelson Piquet Jr. and Red Bull’s David Coulthard.
Coulthard received a late clearance by stewards to take part on Saturday after crashing during opening practice on Friday and sitting out the second session. The team and race stewards examined a car that had shown signs of unusual fragility in the first two races of the season.
In session two — where cars generally run at their quickest with low fuel loads — both Ferraris bettered the race lap record time that has stood since 2004, becoming the first cars this weekend to drop below 1:35.00.
Those knocked out in the first qualifying session were the Super Aguris of Takuma Sato and Anthony Davidsion, the Force India pair Giancarlo Fisichella and Adrian Sutil, along with Sebastien Bourdais of Toro Rosso and Kazuki Nakajima of Williams.
Bourdais ran off the track on his outlap for one last shot at making session two, ruining his chances of progressing, while Nakajima had little need to qualify well as he will get a 10 place penalty on the grid at Sepang for causing a crash behind the safety car in Australia.