Ferrari today claimed the front two spots on the grid for the Malaysian Grand Prix, with Felipe Massa snatching pole position in qualifying ahead of teammate Kimi Raikkonen.

Title rival McLaren filled the second row, with Heikki Kovalainen ahead of Lewis Hamilton, who won the season-opening race in Australia last weekend.

The remainder of the top 10 were Jarno Trulli of Toyota followed by the BMW Sauber pair of Robert Kubica and Nick Heidfeld, then Mark Webber of Red Bull, Fernando Alonso of Renault and Toyota's Timo Glock.

It was the second straight year Massa claimed pole at Sepang, with his time of 1:35.748 almost half a second ahead of Raikkonen, suggesting the Brazilian was running a lighter fuel load and will pit earlier in Sunday's race.

Kovalainen was four-tenths of a second behind Raikkonen, with another tenth back to Hamilton.

It was a boost for Ferrari after its worst start to a season since 1992 in Australia last week. Massa started at fourth on the grid in Melbourne but retired on the 30th lap and Raikkonen moved up from 15th on the grid to third before encountering difficulty and eventually retiring five laps from the end.

Raikkonen picked up one championship point when he was classified in eighth place in Australia.

Rain threatened throughout the session today, but there were only a few spots. There was rain forecast for race day tomorrow.

Those eliminated in the second session were Williams' Nico Rosberg -- who had a hydraulic leak in Saturday practice -- the Honda pair of Jenson Button and Rubens Barrichello, Renault's Nelson Piquet Jr. and Red Bull's David Coulthard.

Coulthard received a late clearance by stewards to take part today after crashing during opening practice yesterday and sitting out the second session. The team and race stewards examined a car that had shown signs of unusual fragility in the first two races of the season.

In session two -- where cars generally run at their quickest with low fuel loads -- both Ferraris bettered the race lap record time that has stood since 2004, becoming the first cars this weekend to drop below 1:35.00.

Those knocked out in the first qualifying session were the Super Aguris of Takuma Sato and Anthony Davidsion, the Force India pair Giancarlo Fisichella and Adrian Sutil, along with Sebastien Bourdais of Toro Rosso and Kazuki Nakajima of Williams.

Bourdais ran off the track on his outlap for one last shot at making session two, ruining his chances of progressing, while Nakajima had little need to qualify well as he will get a 10 place penalty on the grid at Sepang for causing a crash behind the safety car in Australia.

(Agencies via Shanghai Daily March 22, 2008)