2009 Monaco Grand Prix: Button On Pole For Win

Championship leader Jenson Button took pole position for the fourth time this season after appearing to struggle early on in a dramatic qualifying hour in Monte Carlo.

The Brawn GP driver left it late yet again, in a very similar fashion to Barcelona two weeks earlier, but produced one stunning lap of 1m14.902 that leaves him in prime position to claim his first victory around the Principality, and his fifth of the season.

Ferrari were on the brink of upsetting the established order through Kimi Raikkonen, who consistently improved throughout the session to record the second fastest time, just 0.025 seconds adrift of the pole time. However, the Finn will fancy his chances of leading into Saint Devote from the start tomorrow with the benefit of KERS.

Rubens Barrichello and Sebastien Vettel kept the pressure on the championship leader by qualifying in third and fourth respectively, with the second Ferrari driver Felipe Massa performing well to take fifth. He will be relieved to have made it out of session one after an unervy moment in the middle of Piscine (the swimming pool complex), where the car appeared to lose the back end in a straight line and pushed him towards the barrier, fortunately only causing minor damage to the front wing.

Luck was not as such for Lewis Hamilton though, who also had an unusual moment, this time in the slow right hander Mirabeau. He took too high a line on the entrance and it forced him straight onto the marbles and further more onto the barrier, destroying his left rear suspension in the process. The mistake leaves him down in 16th place for tomorrows race, and after many had backed this to be the race that he returns to the front, he was clearly despondent, not removing his helmet for over 15 minutes, "I don't know what i was thinking, I made a mistake". "I apologise to the team for wasting their time" said the young Brit.

Nico Rosberg again showed flashes of brilliance but maybe failed to deliver to full potential, claiming 6th ahead of the drastically improving Mclaren of Heikki Kovalainen, whilst Mark Webber settled down in 8th, evidently heavy on fuel and admittedly on a different strategy to team mate Vettel.

BMW continued to show poor, both drivers eliminated in the first part of qualifying, along with the Toyota's of Jarno Trulli and Timo Glock, in a complete reverse of fortune after locking out the front row only four weeks ago in Bahrain. Trulli tried to focus some of the blame on Renault driver Fernando Alonso, "In the last few corners i found a Renault that blocked me. We've lodged a complaint with the stewards".

Some congratulations is reserved for Force India, who managed to get both drivers through to session two for the first ever time.

People often say that qualifying is 70% of the weekend here in Monaco, and Alain Prost famously said that victory is worth half a world championship. Jenson Button will be hoping those words ring true come Sunday afternoon.