who can be the winner of this Bahran Grand Prix Sunday?

McLaren-Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton, BMW Sauber's Robert Kubica or Ferrari’s Felipe Massa as they are the top three pole position.

Star report

POLAND'S Robert Kubica took his and BMW Sauber's first pole position at the Bahrain Grand Prix yesterday.

The 23-year-old from Krakow denied Ferrari's Brazilian Felipe Massa the top spot with a final flying lap of 1:33.096 right at the end of qualifying at the Sakhir desert circuit.

“Fantastic Robert, first pole for our team. Thank you,” said an emotional team boss Mario Theissen over the car radio as he slowed down.

Brazilian Massa, who won from pole position in Bahrain last year but is still without a point after two races, had dominated Friday's practice and will be looking to revive his title challenge today.

McLaren's 23-year-old championship leader Lewis Hamilton was third fastest and will share the second row with Ferrari's world champion Kimi Raikkonen.

Briton Hamilton leads Raikkonen and BMW Sauber's German Nick Heidfeld by three points in the championship.

Kubica's pole followed his front row start in the Australian season-opener and second place in Malaysia.

The first and only Pole to race in Formula One flat-spotted a tyre in his second qualifying run of the final third phase and had suffered a lot of vibration, making the car hard to handle.

“The car was pulling to one side so I was not expecting after this mistake to be on pole,” he said. “But of course I am very happy.”

BMW, overall runners-up last year after McLaren were stripped of all their points for a spying controversy, have set a target of a first race win in 2008 but champions Ferrari and McLaren have remained ahead of the rest so far.

Kubica's pole was the first by a driver from outside those two teams since Spaniard Fernando Alonso for Renault in China in October 2006.

Massa refused to be downcast: “In a way, I'm happy with second,” he said. “I was a little bit unlucky with the traffic in Q3 and was always behind cars and couldn't do very clean laps ... I think we can be very strong tomorrow.”

Hamilton was using the spare chassis after a big crash on Friday and he thanked his team for working through the night to get it ready.

“We would prefer to be on pole but the team have done a great job to recover from the accident, they stayed up all night ... It (the car) was great today,” he said. – Reuters

Times
01 R. Kubica BMW 1:33.096
02 F. Massa Ferrari 1:33.123
03 L. Hamilton McLaren 1:33.292
04 K. Räikkönen Ferrari 1:33.418
05 H. Kovalainen McLaren 1:33.488
06 N. Heidfeld BMW 1:33.737
07 J. Trulli Toyota 1:33.994
08 N. Rosberg Williams 1:34.015
09 J. Button Honda 1:35.057
10 F. Alonso Renault 1:35.115
11 M. Webber Red Bull 1:32.371
12 R. Barrichello Honda 1:32.508
13 T. Glock Toyota 1:32.528
14 N. Piquet jr. Renault 1:32.790
15 S. Bourdais Scuderia Toro Rosso 1:32.915
16 K. Nakajima Williams 1:32.943
17 D. Coulthard Red Bull 1:33.433
18 G. Fisichella Force India F1 1:33.501
19 S. Vettel Scuderia Toro Rosso 1:33.501
20 A. Sutil Force India F1 1:33.845
21 A. Davidson Super Aguri 1:34.140
22 T. Sato Super Aguri 1:35.725