With a stunning effort, Robert Kubica secured the maiden pole position in  the still short history of the BMW Sauber F1 Team - and the first of a Polish driver in the history of Formula One. Nick Heidfeld completed the fine team result by qualifying for sixth position on the grid.        

As usual, neither Robert nor Nick experienced any problems on the way to advancing to the second leg of qualifying for the Bahrain Grand Prix. Robert was the faster of the pairing and crossed the line in 1:32.893 minutes to finish seventh. While Nick set a 1:33.137-minute lap to take 13th position. Ferrari's Felipe Massa took provisional pole position with a 1:21.937-minute lap.      Eliminated: David Coulthard, Giancarlo Fisichella, Sebastian Vettel, Adrian Sutil, Anthony Davidson, Takuma Sato. In the second knockout phase of qualifying, Robert had to go out just once to safely qualify for the top-ten shootout. The Pole delivered in fine style and crossed the line in 1:31.745 minutes to secure third position. Nick, however, had to make two efforts as he was only eighth, following his first assault. In his second, however, Nick also confirmed the BMW Sauber F1.08's competitiveness by securing fourth position with a 1:31.909-minute lap. Ferrari's Felipe Massa again clocked the fastest lap time of the leg, with his 1:31.188-minute lap. Eliminated: Mark Webber, Rubens Barrichello, Timo Glock, Nelson Piquet, Sébastien Bourdais, Kazuki Nakajima. In the top-ten shootout, Robert caused a true stir by securing pole position. Following his first assault, he was just some thousandths slower than provisional pole-sitter Massa but in his second effort, the Pole upped the ante once again. In the end, he crossed the line in 1:33.096, thus outqualifying the second placed Ferrari driver by 0.127 seconds. Nick experienced a slightly more difficult top-ten shootout but at the end of the day, he crossed the finish line in 1:33.737 minutes to finish sixth and complete the promising team result. Result: 1st Robert Kubica, 2nd Felipe Massa, 3rd Lewis Hamilton, 4th Kimi Räikkönen, 5th Heikki Kovalainen, 6th Nick Heidfeld, 7th Jarno Trulli, 8th Nico Rosberg, 9th Jenson Button, 10th Fernando Alonso.