Webber wins pole position in Malaysian GP

Mark Webber has secured pole position for the Malaysian Grand Prix today.

Jenson Button and Lewis Hamilton will have their work cut out to salvage something from the race after becoming victims of the weather in a qualifying session that was seriously affected by rain.

After a deluge had delayed the final phase of qualifying, Webber took a gamble to switch to intermediate tyres and it paid off as the Australian clocked a time of one minute 49.327 seconds.

Mercedes' Nico Rosberg starts on the front row after securing second place while Sebastian Vettel completed a pleasing day for Red Bull as he lines up third.

It will be even more pleasing for Red Bull that rivals McLaren and Ferrari start from towards the back of the grid after their drivers failed to progress from Q1.

Showers began to fall shortly before the session got under way and both teams decided to delay sending out their drivers in the hope the rain would subside.

It proved a costly error of judgement, however, as Button spun into the gravel to bring a premature end to his session and he lines up 17th on the grid tomorrow while Hamilton struggled to find the pace he needed and will start from 20th.

"We made the wrong call and we paid for it," said Button afterwards.

"It was very frustrating. The negatives are I am along way back on the grid compared to the Red Bulls and the Mercedes but I am in front of three of my rivals.

"It just proves we made the wrong call. You make the right ones sometimes but you also make wrong ones. We can make a good race of it tomorrow."

mfl

Page 2: 10:50Rain has fallen almost like clockwork throughout the week and sure enough it arrived once again shortly before the start of qualifying.

With all three practice session run largely in the dry drivers headed out into the unknown and it was no surprise the wet surface caused a number of cars to skid off.

The leading teams all chose to stay in the pits for the early stages of Q1 and it proved a costly error of judgement for the McLarens and Ferraris as both teams' drivers failed to progress to the second stage of qualifying.

Reigning world champion Button spun into the gravel at turn 14 to bring a premature end to his session while his team-mate Hamilton could not find the pace around the Sepang circuit and could only set the 20th fastest lap.

Alonso and Massa were the other big name casualties from the first phase of qualifying as they too struggled for pace having come onto the circuit late into the session.

Lightning began to appear in the distance at the start of Q2 and, after a brief respite, rain once again began to fall.

However, the second phase was largely incident free although Webber came close to failing to progress before leaping into safety while Schumacher just avoided elimination with the 10th fastest lap.

The lightning that was on the horizon earlier arrived at the circuit at the start of the final qualifying phase and with it came the expected deluge.

With driving conditions far from safe the red flag was waved two minutes into the session with a radio control message stating an indefinite delay as the stormed passed.

The drivers were back out on the circuit almost 10 minutes later and Sutil climbed to the top after one timed lap but Webber chose to switch to the intermediates and it proved an inspired decision as he clocked the fastest lap to comfortable secure pole position.