After a surprise-free opening qualifying session at Spa-Francorchamps, there was a minor shock in Q2 as neither
Toyota made it through into the top ten shoot-out for only the second time in 2008.
The Cologne-based team, which could almost call Spa a 'home' round, saw its last hope of continued participation in the timed session extinguished as
Mark Webber's late improvement pushed
Jarno Trulli out of tenth place. The Italian had only just improved his mark in ninth, and was a sitting duck as those behind him on track took their shot.
Trulli's team-mate,
Timo Glock, had previously failed to improve on his eleventh place and, likewise, Webber's
Red Bull colleague,
David Coulthard, on twelfth, and both were pushed back by Webber's climb from 13th.
Nelson Piquet Jr and
Nico Rosberg also joined the bottom five in the session.
Heikki Kovalainen set the fastest time of the 15 minutes - and the weekend so far - as some sense of normality was restored after
Sebastien Bourdais' Q1 heroics, with
Lewis Hamilton,
Kimi Raikkonen,
Nick Heidfeld and
Felipe Massa rounding out the top five.
For the second race in a row, however,
both Toro Rossos made the cut, with Bourdais rewarded for his earlier fastest lap by getting through in eighth place, one ahead of team-mate
Sebastian Vettel and just behind both
Fernando Alonso and
Robert Kubica.
