The first time in their history, Red Bull have performed a hat-trick of front row lock-outs to continue Sebastian Vettel's charge to become a triple World Champion. It was the German who lit up the time sheets in practice and again in Q2 before carrying that over into claiming Pole with Mark Webber in second.
McLaren weren't as far away as many thought they might have been and they lock-out the second row with Ferrari holding the third. Lewis Hamilton is desperate to claim a victory before he leaves McLaren and will start third ahead of Jenson Button. Ferrari tried to deploy a tow tactic to gain some time, it worked to some extent in Q1 but it wasn't really played out in the remainder of the session. Fernando Alonso came out finishing fifth with Felipe Massa, who suffered a spin in Q2, in sixth.
Kimi Raikkonen will begin the race in seventh with Sergio Perez continuing to show McLaren what he can do by getting into Q3 once again and making it into eighth. Pastor Maldonado returned to Q3 to post a time that sees him start ninth whilst Nico Rosberg made it into Q3 but didn't post a time, giving him a choice of tyres.
Q2 saw drivers miss out in the very last seconds, Romain Grosjean was the last of those to miss out and will begin the race 11th. Force India would have perhaps looked for at least of their cars into Q3 for their home race. Nico Hulkenberg came closest to fulfilling that desire but ultimately finished 12th, Paul Di Resta starts 16th. Williams had a largely successful qualifying session with Maldonado gaining the quickest time in Q1, albeit on the soft tyres, and Bruno Senna will start 13th.
Michael Schumacher continues to disappoint in qualifying and begins tomorrow's race in 14th. Daniel Ricciardo managed to creep out of Q1 and pushes himself up to 15th, ahead of Di Resta. Kamui Kobayashi looked rather nervy throughout the session and didn't look comfortable in the Sauber, hence why he ended up only qualifying 17th.
Not for the first time season, Jean-Eric Vergne failed to make it out of Q1 and joins the usual suspects in 18th place. Vitaly Petrov managed to win the Caterham battle and will start 19th with Heikki Kovalainen 20th, the Finn ended the session beached in the gravel. Timo Glock will start 21st with his Marussia team-mate, Charles Pic, at the back of the grid. The two HRTs managed to out-qualify the Frenchman with Pedro De La Rosa also beating Narain Karthikeyan in front of the Indian's home crowd.
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