Sebastian Vettel takes pole at Malaysian GP

Ferrari’s Fernando Alonso will start the race from fifth,while Renault’s Nick Heidfeld qualified sixth. Ferrari’s Felipe Massa,Renault’s Vitaly Petrov,Mercedes’ Nico Rosberg and Sauber’s Kamui Kobayashi completed the top 10.

For the second race running,Michael Schumacher did not make it into the final session of qualifying running more than six tenths of a second behind teammate Rosberg and will start 11th.

”So very close in the end with the McLaren guys,so I’m very happy,” Vettel said.

”The gap is quite a lot smaller than it was in Australia,so it shows how quickly things can change.”

Hamilton was disappointed not to take pole,but still encouraged that McLaren got much closer to the Red Bulls here than in Melbourne,where Vettel was eight tenths of a second clear of the field in qualifying.

”I don’t think we can be disappointed,” Hamilton said. ”We did a great job to even be up there with the Red Bulls.

”These guys (Red Bull) have a bit of an edge,but clearly we have closed the gap a little bit here.”

All 24 cars will start the race,as all drivers were within seven percent of the fastest car in the first sector of qualifying. The Hispania cars missed out in Australia due to that seven percent rule,but were comfortably inside the threshold on Saturday in an encouraging showing.

The first session of qualifying was red-flagged when the entire left engine cover of Sebastian Buemi’s car flew off dangerously,but thereafter qualifying was free of incidents.

The rain threatened but held off,meaning teams will go into Sunday’s race without any experience of the new Pirelli wet weather tires,and with showers forecast.