Vettel on pole again

Formula One championship leader Sebastian Vettel took his ninth pole position of the season in Spa earlier this afternoon.

The Red Bull driver pipped McLaren's Lewis Hamilton by just 0.432 seconds at the very end of the final qualifying session.

Red Bull had feared that they were conceding a lot of power to McLaren so opted to run with a very low down-force set-up which seemed to do the trick on the drying Belgian track.

If it hadn't been for Hamilton, Red Bull would have taken the front row with birthday boy Mark Webber qualifying third.

Ferrari's Felipe Massa out qualified team-mate Fernando Alonso, Massa will start fourth, Alonso eighth.

Mercedes Nico Rosberg took fifth place beating team-mate Michael Schumacher again, although on this occasion even the biggest critics of the seven time former champion would struggle to blame him.

Schumacher was forced out of qualifying moments after starting his out lap in Q1, unbelievably his right-rear wheel fell off entering Rivage leaving the German as a passenger in his own car has he crashed out in embarrassing circumstances.

Toro Rosso's Jaime Alguersuari has his best-ever qualifying session to take sixth while Bruno Senna who controversially replaced Nico Rosberg in the Renault team finished a fine session in seventh.

Sauber's Sergio Perez and Renault's Vitaly Petrov completed the top ten, with McLaren's Jenson Button previously being knocked out in Qualifying 2. The 2009 champion will start 13th.