Sebastian Vettel snatches pole in Malaysia

Sebastian Vettel and Red Bull Racing have snatched pole position away from a resurgent McLaren in Sepang.

The German was the last of the front-runners to complete his lap in Q3, and undercut Lewis Hamilton’s best effort by 0.1s.

Mark Webber will start third having failed to go quicker on his second Q3 run, while Jenson Button ended the session fourth.

Fernando Alonso, Nick Heidfeld, Felipe Massa, Vitaly Petrov, Nico Rosberg and Kamui Kobayashi filled the remainder of the top 10 – with all six drivers have completed just one run in Q3.

For the second consecutive race, Michael Schumacher narrowly missed out on making Q3, and will start 11th.

The Q2 session had seen Button and Hamilton signal themselves as genuine threats for pole position, beating the Red Bulls into the top two spots.

Earlier, Webber had been just two spots away failing to get out of Q1 in 15th place, thanks to Red Bull being the only team not to run a set of soft tyres.

The opening Q1 session had seen Williams rookie Pastor Maldonado eliminated, along with the usual suspects from Team Lotus, Virgin Racing and HRT.

The Spanish owned squad had cause for celebration however, after making it within the 107% qualification cut-off.

See below for the Qualifying result

1	Sebastian Vettel	Red Bull-Renault	1m34.870s
2	Lewis Hamilton	McLaren-Mercedes	1m34.974s	0.104
3	Mark Webber	Red Bull-Renault	1m35.179s	0.309
4	Jenson Button	McLaren-Mercedes	1m35.200s	0.330
5	Fernando Alonso	Ferrari	1m35.802s	0.932
6	Nick Heidfeld	Renault	1m36.124s	1.254
7	Felipe Massa	Ferrari	1m36.251s	1.381
8	Vitaly Petrov	Renault	1m36.324s	1.454
9	Nico Rosberg	Mercedes	1m36.809s	1.939
10	Kamui Kobayashi	Sauber-Ferrari	1m36.820s	1.950
11	Michael Schumacher	Mercedes	1m37.035s	1.466
12	Sebastien Buemi	Toro Rosso-Ferrari	1m37.160s	1.591
13	Jaime Alguersuari	Toro Rosso-Ferrari	1m37.347s	1.778
14	Paul di Resta	Force India-Mercedes	1m37.370s	1.801
15	Rubens Barrichello	Williams-Cosworth	1m37.496s	1.927
16	Sergio Perez	Sauber-Ferrari	1m37.528s	1.959
17	Adrian Sutil	Force India-Mercedes	1m37.593s	2.024
18	Pastor Maldonado	Williams-Cosworth	1m38.276s	1.532
19	Heikki Kovalainen	Lotus-Renault	1m38.645s	1.901
20	Jarno Trulli	Lotus-Renault	1m38.791s	2.047
21	Timo Glock	Virgin-Cosworth	1m40.648s	3.904
22	Jerome D’Ambrosio	Virgin-Cosworth	1m41.001s	4.257
23	Tonio Liuzzi	HRT-Cosworth	1m41.549s	4.805
24	Narain Karthikeyan	HRT-Cosworth	1m42.574s	5.830

 

See below for Speedcafe.com’s Malaysian Grand Prix Race Guide