By BMW Sauber F1 Team
July 29 2006

In qualifying for the German GP, both BMW Sauber F1 Team drivers had to settle for midfield grid positions. Jacques Villeneuve and Nick Heidfeld gave their very best and displayed a lot of fighting spirit but at the end of the day, they had to make do with 14th (Jacques) and 16th (Nick) position Leg 1: Close but successful - that's the perfect way to describe the performance of Nick and Jacques in the first leg of the qualifying session that was temporarily red-flagged when Scott Speed (Toro Rosso) went off and crashed into the walls. Both Nick and Jacques completed five laps, with Nick being the slightly faster. The German set a 1:16.234-minute lap to finish 15th and Jacques (1:16.281 minutes) came 16th, thus being the last driver to qualify for the second leg of the session. Ferrari's Felipe Massa (1:14.412 minutes) was the quickest man of the leg.

Not qualified for leg two: Scott Speed, Sakon Yamamoto, Tiago Monteiro, Takuma Sato, Christijan Albers, Vitantonio Luizzi.

Leg 2: Both Jacques and Nick failed to make it to the third and final leg of the session. Both made one effort at the beginning of the leg and another in the closing minutes, but with their personal fastest lap times of 1:15.329 (Jacques) and 1:15.397 minutes (Nick) they had to settle for 14th and 16th positions. The fastest lap of the leg (1:13.778 minutes) was set by Ferrari's Michael Schumacher.

Not qualified for top qualifying: Nick Heidfeld, Nico Rosberg, Jacques Villeneuve, Jarno Trulli, Christian Klien, Mark Webber.

Top Qualifying: The final leg of the qualifying session for the German Grand Prix was a truly thrilling one and at the end of the day, McLaren Mercedes driver Kimi Räikkönen (1:14.070 minutes) secured pole position, followed by the Ferrari pairing, Michael Schumacher (1:14.205 minutes) and Felipe Massa (1:14.569 minutes).

Result: 1st Kimi Räikkönen, 2nd Michael Schumacher, 3rd Felipe Massa, 4th Jenson Button, 5th Giancarlo Fisichella, 6th Rubens Barrichello, 7th Fernando Alonso, 8th Ralf Schumacher, 9th Pedro de la Rosa, 10th David Coulthard.