Belgium Grand Prix Qualifying Over

After three practices and the qualifying, the race can begin, as the historic Spa circuit hosts the 2009 Belgium Grand Prix. The second practice session was notable only because Jaime Alguersuari had a failure in his Ferrari engine, at the very end of the qualifying, and Jenson Button was saying that his car was handling poorly as he practiced with his Mercedes, but Lewis Hamilton didn't have any problem with his, coming in fastest on the second practice. He was followed by Timo Glock, just 47.217 to Hamilton's time of 1:47.201. Kimi Raikkonen was third and Mark Webber came in fourth.

The third practice session was a couple of seconds faster, with Nick Heidfeld taking the fastest time at 1:45.388, however Mark Webber is out, with what is apparantly engine problems as did Sebastian Vettel, who apparently is suffering from the same problem, and will need his V8 changed out before he qualifies. Jarno Trulli was second, while Force India's Adrian Sutil had the third fastest practice time. Another notable event was Giancarlo Fisichella running over some sort of small animal during the practice. The slowest practice time was Kazuki Nakajima.

In the qualifying session, Giancarlo Fisichella of Force India was stunned to hear that he had taken pole position in Saturday's qualifying and will be starting first on the grid at Spa on Sunday. Toyota's Jarno Trulli took second position, who said that it was mysterious that he was suddenly so competitive, since they had done nothing different to the car since the past few races. Nick Heidfeld was another surprising qualifier, third on the starting grid. Names that are usually at the top of the list for qualifying such as Rubens Barichello, Sebastian Vettel, Mark Webber and Jenson Button seemed to struggle this session. Button mentioned the handling once again in a BBC Radio interview, saying that everytime he hit the brakes the rear end would move. The Belgium Grand Prix at Spa starts on Sunday, August 30^th.