Vettel snatches pole at the death

Sebastian Vettel left it until the last possible moment to snatch pole position from Lewis Hamilton in a dramatic qualifying session ahead of tomorrow’s Malaysian Grand Prix.

Unlike in Australia a fortnight ago there was no walkover from Vettel in securing Red Bull’s 17th pole position from their last 21 races.

On this occasion the reigning world champion pipped McLaren’s Hamilton by 0.114secs, in stark contrast to the near 0.8secs advantage he enjoyed around Melbourne’s Albert Park.

Hamilton looked like he had his first pole since Canada last year, but with Vettel behind him, the 23-year-old German was the last to cross the line and make it 17 careers starts from the front of the grid.

But as in Melbourne, it is the same one-two-three line-up with Vettel ahead of Hamilton, then his own team-mate in Mark Webber, with Jenson Button fourth in his McLaren.

Over the team radio team principal Christian Horner congratulated his young driver as he said: "Great lap, well done, you did it by a tenth of a second.''

In response, Vettel said: “Yeah, that’s what I’m talking about. Great job today.”

Behind the leading quartet, Ferrari’s Fernando Alonso starts fifth, with Nick Heidfeld in his Renault sixth, a superb improvement from his 18th in Australia.

Felipe Massa lines up seventh in his Ferrari, followed by the second Renault of Vitaly Petrov, Nico Rosberg in his Mercedes and Sauber’s Kamui Kobayashi.

It proved to be a dramatic end to the middle 15-minute qualifying stint because, with the clock beyond zero, on his final flying lap Rosberg dumped team-mate Michael Schumacher out of Q3.

For the second successive race the seven-times champion will start from 11th on the grid, finishing almost 0.7secs adrift of his fellow German.

Behind Schumacher will be Sebastien Buemi, who endured a scare in the initial 20-minute session when a piece of bodywork flew off his Toro Rosso.

With the left-hand sidepod lying on the track, the session was red flagged in order for a marshal to run on and retrieve it, causing a four-minute delay.

Team-mate Jaime Alguersuari starts one place behind in 13th, with Paul di Resta again performing admirably in only the second race of his rookie F1 campaign.

The Scot will line up 14th in his Force India, more than 0.2secs and three places ahead of team-mate Adrian Sutil who has Williams’ Rubens Barrichello and Sergio Perez in his Sauber also ahead of him.

Unlike in Australia when we only had a 22-car field as the Hispania Racing duo failed to qualify after finishing outside the 107% time, on this occasion Vitantonio Liuzzi and Narain Karthikeyan will both race.

Karthikeyan propped up the timesheet with a lap of 1:42.574, nearly six seconds down on the best time set by Massa, but a second inside the 107% time of 1:43.516.

Ahead of the Indian driver will be team-mate Liuzzi, with Virgin Racing pair Timo Glock and Jerome D’Ambrosio lining up on the 11th row in 21st and 22nd places.

Lotus duo Heikki Kovalainen and Jarno Trulli start 19th and 20th, with Williams’ Pastor Maldonado the man to miss out on a place in Q2 by 0.113secs to team-mate Barrichello.

In terms of optimism for the future, and the fact Lotus are slowly clawing their way towards the midfield, Kovalainen missed out on a place in Q2 by just half a second.