Vettel takes pole in Malaysia

As predicted Formula One served up a barnstorming finale to qualifying in Malaysia.

It took a while for qualifying to get going, but the final couple of minutes in the shoot-out turned out to be a real battle between Red Bull and McLaren.

At the beginning of qualifying Buemi lost some body work from his Toro Rosso to bring out the red flag during Q1, but the disruption didn't create much of a problem and normal service quickly resumed with the three new teams all being knocked out.

Lotus flirted with putting both Williams drivers under pressure for a place in Q2, but eventually it was only Pastor Maldonado who fell short, with Rubens Barrichello sneaking through.

Hispania had cause for celebration with both Vitantonio Liuzzi and Narain Karthikeyan getting within 107% of Massa's time to qualify for the race.

It was an uneventful Q2 until the chequered flag was waved and Mercedes Nico Rosberg snuck into the pole position shoot-out by knocking team-mate Michael Schumacher out, with the seven-time World champion starting the race eleventh.

But the best was certainly left till last with Red Bull and McLaren having a four way shoot-out for pole position.

Lewis Hamilton, Jenson Button, Mark Webber and Sebastian Vettel were the only drivers to make two runs, with everyone else settling for just the one run.

In the end it looked like Lewis Hamilton would take pole, with both Button and Webber coming up just short, but the final car to cross the line was Vettel and he found the few tenths of a second that he had been missing throughout the weekend thus far and stuck 'kinky kylie' on pole.