Vettel takes Monaco Pole

Traditionally qualifying can be perceived as the most important day of the weekend at a Monaco Grand Prix.

With it being so difficult to overtake around this historic track, if you're not at the front on a Saturday, you are not likely to be there on a Sunday.

This year with the new Pirelli tyres however that may not prove to be the case, with teams expected to run various strategies, with some drivers going for three stops, some two and a few may well gamble on just one.

But even with the impact of the tyres, track position on the grid will still give an advantage on the streets of Monte Carlo and the teams went all out this week until a big incident involving Sauber's Sergio Perez.

With two minutes of Q3 remaining Sebastian Vettel was fastest with Jenson Button second and Mark Webber third.

But that was when qualifying ended, with Sergio Perez suffering a hard impact after losing control of his car coming out of the tunnel.

Once the session re-started the likes of Lewis Hamilton couldn't get enough temperature into their tyres to make a good enough run and he will start the race seventh, while Vettel didn't even complete another lap knowing he had already secured pole position.

In the earlier sessions neither Hispania car took to the track in Q1, it was always unlikely that Tonio Liuzzi would make it following his crash in practice this morning, but strangely neither did Narain Karthikeyan. Whether they will be allowed start the race is now down to the mathematicians who will work out if they are within 107% of the fastest time set in Q1 which was set by Lewis Hamilton (1minute 15.207seconds) during their laps in the free practice sessions on Thursday and this morning.

Joining Hispania back in the pits was both Virgin Racing cars (Timo Glock and Jerome D'Ambrosio), both Team Lotus cars (Heikki Kovalainen and Jarno Trulli) and Jaime Alguersuari's Toro Rosso.

In Q2, everyone who wasn't in a McLaren, Red Bull or a Ferrari were fearing getting knocked out before the top 10 shoot-out, Rubens Barrichello had a final shot, but ultimately failed to beat his team-mate Pastor Maldonado who snuck into the top 10.

Both Renault's (Vitaly Petrov and Nick Heidfeld), Force India's (Paul di Resta and Adrian Sutil) Sauber's Kamui Kobayashi, Toro Rosso's Sebastien Buemi were knocked out.