The combination of the most famous team in Formula 1 and the sports most famous venue does not seem to be working out too well at the moment. This afternoon, Scuderia Ferrari only fielded one car in the qualifying session for tomorrows 78 lap race, that of Fernando Alonso. Despite valiant efforts from the crew, Felipe Massas extensively damaged F138 could not be repaired in time, in between FP3 in which he slammed into the barriers and the 2 oclock start for qualifying. In theory, this means the Brazilian will start from the back of the grid on Sunday, although we must wait and see if the strategists opt to start him from pit lane instead, just as they did with Fernando in 2010 when it was the Spanish driver who played no part in qualifying after crashing in the morning on the streets of the Principality.

As predicted, it rained during qualifying, a light drizzle that eventually left a dry enough line for those who made the cut through from Q1 to run the second part of Q2 on the Super Soft slick Pirellis. Fernando had no trouble with the first two acts of this afternoons performance and went on to set the sixth fastest time in Q3, which means he starts from the outside of Row 3. For the second successive race, Mercedes have got a stranglehold on the front row, with Nico Rosberg again on pole, as he was in Spain a fortnight ago, with Lewis Hamilton alongside him. Here, where overtaking is so tough, the silver arrows will prove much harder to pass than was the case in previous races at more conventional tracks this year.

As for Felipe, he could only stand and watch as the mechanics worked ceaselessly to try and get his badly damaged car back into one piece, but there simply wasnt enough time to effectively rebuild a car from scratch. The slowest and longest race of the year will seem even longer than usual tomorrow, but the Brazilian is not the sort to give up hope and although saying that anything can happen in a Grand Prix is something of a clich, at this venue it is also the truth.

In Fernandos case, the Mercedes duo has again given his championship aspirations a bit of a helping hand, as it has kept the two men ahead of him in the classification, Red Bulls Sebastian Vettel and Lotus Kimi Raikkonen off the front row, so that even if the grid order never changed in the race, it would prevent the German and the Finn getting the biggest points haul. Vettel is third on the grid, with team-mate Mark Webber alongside him in fourth, with Raikkonen fifth next to the Spanish Ferrari man. The threat from the next row tomorrow in what is expected to be a dry 78 laps, comes from seventh placed Sergio Perez for McLaren and Adrian Sutil eighth for Force India. The preferred strategy here is to stop just once, as every visit to pit lane can involve a risk of coming out behind slower traffic, but that could be a bit trickier with this years Pirellis, so we might see some variety tomorrow.

Fernando Alonso: Unfortunately, today did not go as we had hoped, even if we tried our very best. We werent as competitive as in the first two free practice sessions on Thursday, but I dont think we can lay the blame for this step backwards on the cooler temperatures, because the conditions are the same for everyone. There was less grip today and on the Softs, maybe we struggled a bit more this morning. I think its much simpler than that and we struggled to adapt our car to this very special track, so different to all the others. We usually go better in the race, but its a different story here because its almost impossible to overtake. This is a race where anything can happen, and we need to be very careful at the start to avoid ending up stuck in a pack. Fortunately, the Mercedes are on the front so that my closest rivals in the classification are not too far, with Kimi starting next to me and Vettel just one row ahead. Lets hope I can pass both of them so that they cant pull further away in the championship. I feel sorry for Felipe, as the team did its very best but could not get him out in time for qualifying. I am well aware how starting from the back of the grid here in Monaco can make a difficult race even harder. However, I hope he can do well and that together we can bring home as many points as possible.Felipe Massa: I am disappointed not to have been able to take part in qualifying and it was really frustrating. This morning in the final practice session, I braked on a bump, the car bottomed and unexpectedly both front wheels locked up and from then on, there was nothing I could do. After hitting the guardrail I was waiting for the next impact with the barriers. Fortunately Im okay, Ive just got a bit of muscle strain, but the car was very damaged and the mechanics efforts to try and repair it in time came to nothing. It was a lot of work for the team, they all made a huge effort and for this I really want to thank them. Its a real shame starting from the back, especially on a track where its so difficult to overtake, but now we need to be optimistic and concentrate on tomorrows race. There will be a lot of work to do to assess if we need to change something in terms of set-up and strategy, to try and come up with something different which might give us an advantage. We know we are starting from a very difficult position, but the race is long and anything can happen. We will try and make the most of any opportunity, pushing to the maximum as usual.Pat Fry: Not an easy day, as we faced an uphill struggle right from the morning, when Felipe had his accident in the third free practice session. The team raced against time to repair the car so that he could take part in qualifying, but unfortunately there were too many damaged parts at the front and rear, so that required a lot of work and there was just too little time to get it done. Qualifying in the wet in Monaco is always interesting, as one has to pay particular attention to the traffic, the yellow flags and the changing track conditions, especially on days like this when the rain comes and goes. The drop in temperature partly compromised our performance and with Fernando we also had a few balance problems: both these factors prevented us getting the result we were hoping for, even if it can be said that the final classification did not throw up too many surprises compared to previous races. In Q2, the decision to switch from the intermediates to the Super Soft was taken at the right moment: in the final stages, the track was dry in parts but the pace of the Mercedes and Red Bulls was very good. Tomorrow we will be fighting against the statistics as the winners here have nearly always started from the front rows, but we will try and make the most of any opportunity that comes our way to move up the order.

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