Rosberg Secures Istanbul Pole

Rosberg set his time just before a light sprinkling of rain dusted the track, which ensured that nobody would be able to better the time after a highly competitive qualifying session.

This morning's fastest man Speed was the early pacesetter, and the first man to break the 1:39 barrier on his first full lap, but thereafter the lap times tumbled.

Nelson Piquet Jr, Giorgio Pantano and then Speed headed the times before Rosberg made the top spot his own.

Pantano and Piquet rounded out the final top five places, with the Brazilian stopping on track in the dying minutes of the session while trying to reclaim the top spot.

With the track providing much more grip than this morning's practice session courtesy of the Formula One runners, off-track incidents were kept to a minimum - only Lopez, Olivier Pla and Can Artam spun, with the latter pair doing so on a slightly damp track at the end of qualifying.

The twelve teams were able to markedly improve their laptimes from this morning - Rosberg's qualifying lap was almost two seconds faster than Speed's fastest practice time, and the top seven drivers were split by just one second, with two seconds covering the first seventeen drivers.

Pos  Driver       Team               Time                 Laps
 1.  Rosberg      ART                1:38:416               9
 2.  Speed        iSport             1:38:531   +  0.115   11
 3.  Lopez        DAMS               1:38:561   +  0.145   13
 4.  Pantano      Super Nova         1:38:690   +  0.274    9
 5.  Piquet       Hitech Piquet      1:38:820   +  0.611   11
 6.  Premat       ART                1:38:897   +  0.481    9
 7.  Carroll      Super Nova         1:39:335   +  0.919   11
 8.  Bruni        Coloni             1:39:533   +  1.117   12
 9.  Garcia       Racing Eng.        1:39:708   +  1.292   10
10.  Yoshimoto    BCN Comp.          1:39:737   +  1.321   14
11.  Alvarez      Campos Racing      1:39:830   +  1.414   10
12.  Jani         Racing Eng.        1:39:982   +  1.566   11
13.  Kovalainen   Arden              1:40:040   +  1.624   12
14.  Hernandez    Campos Racing      1:40:064   +  1.648   12
15.  Fauzy        DAMS               1:40:081   +  1.665   13
16.  Monfardini   Durango            1:40:205   +  1.789   12
17.  Negrao       Hitech Piquet      1:40:295   +  1.879   12
18.  Lapierre     Arden              1:40:629   +  2.213   12
19.  Mondini      DPR                1:40:749   +  2.333   12
20.  Piccione     Durango            1:40:770   +  2.354   13
21.  Viso         BCN Comp.          1:40:794   +  2.378   13
22.  Artam        iSport             1:40:952   +  2.536   14
23.  Pla          DPR                1:40:956   +  2.540    6
24.  Lauda        Coloni             1:41:184   +  2.768   11

All Timing Unofficial