Hamilton beats Vettel and ends Red Bull run of poles

Red Bull’s chance of making a clean sweep in qualifying this season hás ended as Lewis Hamilton beat Red Bull’s world champion Sebastian Vettel and was the fastest of the session at the Yeongam circuit in South Korea.

This pole position was the first from the McLaren driver since last year’s Canadian Grand Prix and interrupted Red Bull’s drive which went back to last year’s Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.

After being the quickest in both Q1 and Q2, the first run in Q3 just put Hamilton in front of Vettel by 0.03 seconds. For some moments it seemed like McLaren might sweep the first lane on the grid, but Vettel beat Jenson Button’s time with 1m36.042s, while his team-mate was already improving to 1m35.820s, beating the already crowned 2011 world champion.

Mark Webber will start tomorrow’s race in fourth, after abandoning his second attempt on Q3 and will be followed by both Ferraris, with Massa ahead of Alonso.

Row four will be occupied by the Mercedes’ Nico Rosberg and Renault’s Vitaly Petrov. The two Force Indias made it to Q3 but then opted not to run and save tyres for tomorrow’s race.

Michael Schumacher failed do make it into Q3 after a a tyre vibration on his last lap on Q2. He finished in 12^th place between the two Toro Rossos. In the final instants of Q2 Jaime Alguersuari seemed to be heading to Q3 but a last effort from Di Resta put him in 11^th place.

Bruno Senna had a disappointing run in qualifying today as he was 0.6 seconds down on his team-mate’s lap time, finishing in 15^th.

It didn’t went well for Sauber with Kamui Kobayashi and Sergio Perez finishing in 14^th and 17^th respectively. Williams struggled again and Pastor Maldonado beat his team-mate Rubens Barrichello, who was thrown out of Q2, and finishing in 16th.