Germany’s Sebastian Vettel, in a Red Bull, will start today’s British Grand Prix in pole position after topping final qualifying.
It was the German’s second consecutive pole and the 22-year-old has now collected five poles this season, with the Red Bull team having taken nine from 10 races this year.
Vettel clocked a fastest time of 1 minute, 29.615 seconds, 0.2 seconds faster than teammate Mark Webber of Australia. Spaniard Fernando Alonso qualified third for Ferrari.
The German said he loves driving round the Silverstone track and was hoping for a repeat of his win last year.
“It’s unbelievable,” Vettel said. “It’s just so much fun driving here, I really like this track and the new section is also great — I hope we can repeat last year’s result.”
Crowd favorite Lewis Hamilton of McLaren opted to ditch his new rear-blown diffuser, but managed to place fourth.
The 25-year-old admitted that his team was a long way off matching the pace of the Red Bulls, but was hoping that they would add to their catalogue of reliability issues during today’s race.
“In terms of pure pace, it’s impossible to touch Red Bull at the moment, but their car isn’t as reliable as ours, so we’re banking on that really,” Hamilton said.
German Nico Rosberg of Mercedes was fifth, with Poland’s Robert Kubica of Renault sixth fastest, followed by Brazilian Felipe Massa, who will start in seventh in the second Ferrari.
Williams driver Brazilian Rubens Barichello qualified eighth ahead of Sauber’s Pedro de la Rosa and German Michael Schumacher of Mercedes, who will start 10th.
On a warm, sunny day at the redesigned Silverstone circuit, the Red Bulls set the pace from the get-go, while the three new teams were all eliminated in the Q1 opening mini session, along with Toro Rosso driver Jaime Alguersuari.
Spaniard Alguersuari looked like he had done enough to qualify for Q2, but was pipped in the final minutes by Force India driver Vitantonio Liuzzi of Italy.
The most shocking moment of Q2 was seeing McLaren’s reigning champion Jenson Button fail to make the cut to the top 10.
“I think there’s something wrong with the car,” he said. “This morning was good, but this afternoon the car was undriveable. It’s been a tricky weekend for us, but that just wasn’t normal.”
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