Sebastian Vettel secures a hat-trick of Pole positions at Valencia in an extremely close qualifying session. The German did end up four tenths of a second faster than Lewis Hamilton, but Q2 saw places 1-13 separated by 0.22 seconds. This gives Vettel his 33rd Pole of his career, putting him third alongside Jim Clark and Alain Prost in the all-time Pole-sitters list.
Pastor Maldonado will start third ahead one of the likely drivers to become the eighth winner, if it is to happen, Romain Grosjean, who was fastest in Q2. His Lotus teammate and another potential eighth winner, Kimi Raikkonen, is in fifth alongside Mercedes' Nico Rosberg. Kamui Kobayashi made it to seventh alongside an impressive Nico Hulkenberg in eighth. Jenson Button had a very quiet session and will begin the race in ninth. Force India had an excellent session with Paul Di Resta also making it into Q3 and will start tenth.
With the gap so small at the end of Q2, there were quite a few disappointments. Most notable is probably Fernando Alonso who will start eleventh ahead of Michael Schumacher and teammate Felipe Massa, who was only eight hundredths behind the Spaniard. Bruno Senna will start 14th ahead of Sauber's Sergio Perez. Heikki Kovalainen squeezed into Q2 on the very last lap and managed to put himself ahead of Daniel Ricciardo in 16th.
The news before the session was that Timo Glock was taken ill and unable to participate, he will begin the race last if he is able to compete tomorrow. Jean-Eric Vergne was the driver to be knocked out by Kovalainen and will therefore start 18th. Mark Webber's Red Bull was suffering technical problems throughout practice and the mechanics couldn't solve the problem, meaning the Australian could only nurture the car to 19th.
Vitaly Petrov will start 20th with both HRT cars out-qualifying Charles Pic. Pedro De La Rosa will begin ahead of Narain Karthikeyan in that inter-team battle. Whether Glock is fit enough to compete or not, a Marussia will be brining up the rear tomorrow.
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