Massa pulled out all the stops this afternoon to claim Valencia’s first Pole Position. He just beat Hamilton to it in the dying moments of qualifying  by two-tenths of a second.

Yet again Raikkonen could not better the pace of his team mate and his Ferrari was edged out of third place by the BMW of Robert Kubica.

Kovalainen came in three-quarters of a second slower than Hamilton so his McLaren will line up fifth on tomorrow’s grid. The team though, highly paranoid about the dreaded safety car have filled his car up to the gills with fuel for the race.

After completing the second knock-out session of the day in an extremely impressive first place Vettel had to finally settle for a career best sixth for the start of the European Grand Prix.

Despite having to deal with gear box problems in the morning’s practise session, Toyota’s Jarno Trulli pulled it all together for qualifying and will line up seventh tomorrow.

With the Toro Rosso of Bourdais splitting the pair, the boys at Williams, Rosberg and Nakajima will start in ninth and eleventh respectively for the race, a much needed improvement on recent times for the team.

After a hairy moment over the kerb on the exit of turn 14 Alonso was unable to give his home crowd what they wanted and his qualifying came to an end at the close of quali 2 with the 13^th best time of the day.

While Toro Rosso seemed to storm through the afternoon their sister team, Red Bull Racing did not enjoy the same success. Mark Webber could only manage 14^th and his team mate, David Coulthard finished up three places behind him.

The Honda of Barrichello could not seem to hook up at all on the street surface of Valencia; a lowly 19^th being the best time for the veteran Brazilian. Jenson Button seemed to having a more successful time of it until the softer tyres went on, resulting in the Brit only managing 16^th on the grid. 

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