Vettel beats Mansell record

Sebastian Vettel took his 15th pole position of the 2011 season to beat Nigel Mansell's record of 14 poles in 1992.

The back-to-back Formula One World Champion set a time of 1minute 11.918seconds around the Interlagos circuit, but then had to wait to see if it would be enough to put him on pole position for the Brazilian Grand Prix on Sunday.

Red Bull team-mate Mark Webber pushed Vettel the hardest, but the Australian couldn't quite match the speed of Vettel and fell 0.181 seconds short.

'There has been quite some talk before qualifying and this weekend about this particular record and I think the best thing was to not just think about it,' Vettel told the press after he stepped out of his record breaking car.

'It was emotional when I crossed the line as I knew I had given it all. Then I had to wait quite a long time to see if the time was good enough or not, but then ears kept popping: the engineer told me Button was P2, then Mark P2 so I got pole position.

'It took the masters in that discipline a few races less [1992 season had 16 races, 2011 had 19], but this is special to me. I am happy to be here.'

McLaren couldn't handle the pace of either Red Bull all afternoon and had to settle for third and fourth. Jenson Button beating Lewis Hamilton by 0.197 seconds on his way to hopefully clinching runners-up position in the drivers championship.

Nico Rosberg in the Mercedes managed to split the Ferrari's with a time of 1minute 13.050seconds, Fernando Alonso will start fifth, while Felipe Massa in his home Grand Prix will start seventh.

Adrian Sutil for Force India will start eighth, with Renault's Bruno Senna starting alongside Michael Schumacher, who didn't set a time in Q3.

Paul di Resta starts eleventh alongside Rubens Barrichello, who will hope this weekend will not be his last in Formula One.

The Toro Rosso's of Jaime Alguersuari and Sebastien Buemi take up the seventh row of the grid, while Vitaly Petrov's Renault starts ahead of the two Sauber's.

Pastor Maldonado joined the newbie teams in the drop zone at the end of Q1. With Lotus beating HRT and Virgin.