Monza - This is Formula One's cathedral of speed. A sacred place steeped in history, where dreams can be made or cruelly broken. For brief moments on Saturday afternoon, the fans dreamed of a Ferrari pole position at the Italian Grand Prix as the red cars mustered unexpected pace in qualifying.
“I think we probably surprised ourselves a little bit,” Kimi Raikkonen said. The Finn had just qualified on the front row of the grid for the first time in ages, yet managed to make comedian Jack Dee look super-animated and appear as if his cat had just died. “We expected a strong weekend, but not this strong. The car turned out to be pretty good and this is the best qualifying of the year for us as a team. I'm not expecting an easy race, but let's see what happens.”
The tifosi's dream might come true this afternoon, but on Saturday for the 11th time this year and the seventh time in a row, equalling Alain Prost's 1993 record for consecutive poles in the same season, Lewis Hamilton's Mercedes set the fastest time.
Having dominated all of the practice sessions and the first two in qualifying, the reigning world champion was fastest yet again on the first runs in the all-important third and final qualifying session. He stopped the clocks in 1min 23.397sec, leaving Ferrari's Sebastian Vettel second from Raikkonen on 1:23.705 and 1:23.712.
Where was Nico Rosberg, seemingly forever riding shotgun this year? Both Mercedes had upgraded engines, but the German's had gone awry in the morning, leaving his crew to make a frantic change back to the older version that has been so successful this year. He was only fifth then, behind Felipe Massa's similarly powered Williams.
On the second and final runs Hamilton set new benchmarks for the second and third sectors, but had not been fast enough in the first. No matter, his two best laps were still good enough to retain the initiative.
But Vettel improved to 1:23.685, only to see Raikkonen jump ahead with 1:23.631. The tifosi went berserk. Rosberg climbed to fourth, on 1:23.703, but the respective positions of the Mercedes suggested that Ferrari's own upgraded engines had helped them to get so close to the Silver Arrows' performance.
While Raikkonen dead-panned, Vettel wore his trademark schoolboy smirk and showed no sign of angst that his partner had beaten him by a mere 0.54sec. As the fans lapped it up, he was clearly enjoying his first experience of being a Ferrari driver on the prancing horse's home turf.
“This is a fantastic result,” he beamed. “Second and third and very close to Lewis, that's the main positive of the day and makes us confident for tomorrow. It's the first time for me with Ferrari here and it's great to see all the support all the way round, people in red jumping up and down in the grandstands. It's different from other races I've done.
“I'm sorry, Lewis,” he added, turning to the polesitter alongside him. “I don't mind if you're on the podium tomorrow but I hope we'll be in front of you. We'll do everything we can to deliver a strong result.”
Hamilton, sporting his snazzy new blond look, smiled tolerantly. “Pole is always a great feeling,” he said. “I'm really happy, though my pole lap at Spa was better!
“I've had a couple of poles here but it's not always such an easy getaway and it's a long run down to Turn One. These guys are good off the line, but our race pace tends to be quite strong so I hope we see that tomorrow. I don't want to take away Seb's dreams, but I have dreams also…”
The fight between Mercedes and Ferrari was a highlight thus far of a slightly off-key weekend, which had seen Sir Jackie Stewart restricted to a single demonstration lap in the BRM in which, 50 years ago, he had secured the first of his 27 grand prix victories and set himself on the path to three world championships.
A weekend on which the gap between F1 ringmaster Bernie Ecclestone and the Italian authorities widened as negotiations dragged on over contract renewal, leaving the unthinkable prospect that Monza really might lose the race for which it has been famous since 1922.
A weekend on which the drivers were ordered to quit bad-mouthing Pirelli over understandable concerns about the failures that struck Vettel and Rosberg in the Belgian GP.
The Independent on Sunday