Vettel takes dominant Monza pole

F1 Grand Prix, GP Italy, Autodromo Nazionale di Monza

Sebastian Vettel secured yet another pole position as he easily outqualified his competitors at Monza, the home race of Ferrari. The McLaren drivers are second and third on the grid while the first Ferrari is that of Fernando Alonso in 4th place.

The weather is sunny yet again at the start of qualifying for the Italian GP at Monza. The usual teams are out early, but most others choose to not wait until the final part of the session to put in their laptimes.

Halfway through the session, Lewis Hamilton is fastest, being just 0.025s faster than Sebastian Vettel. Button is third fastest, quicker than Alonso, Webber and Massa.

12 minutes into the session Maldonado is off the track and breaks his front win on the inside of the exit of parabolica. He opened his DRS slighly too early out of the exit, lost rear grip and went head on into the barriers. Lucky for him only his front wing broke off the car, allowing him to get back on track in into the pitlane to continue his qualifying session.

The end of the session is marked with particularly intense activity on track, including LRGP, Williams, Toro Rosso, Virgin, Team Lotus and HRT. At the end, out are Alguersuari, Trulli, Kovalainen, Glock, D'Ambrosio, Ricciardo and Liuzzi.

First man out on track in Q2 then is Maldonado. It is Senna though who sets the faster lap moment later, and Vettel improves on that 3 minutes into the session.

5 minutes later Button moved up to P2, Rosberg P3 and Alonso P4. Lewis Hamilton is 7th fastest but posted his flying lap on the harder compound. He was in fact the only one to do so but it looks likely he will need to use the softs to be sure of a place in Q3.

At the closing stages, Di Resta outqualifies his teammate and secures a place in Q3 as he is 10th fastest. Senna though at that time is still on track and moves into 10th place, just behind his teammate. This puts 5 entire teams into Q3, including Red Bull, McLaren, Ferrari, Mercedes GP and Lotus Renault.

In Q3 the Ferraris are the first to set a time with Alonso being slightly quicker than Massa. Vettel though improved that even more, while Hamilton and Button snuck in between Vettel and Alonso. Petrov on his lap is only 6th fastest. While being quickest, Vettel had a massive oversteer moment halfway through Variante Ascari. Vettel tried to come in on that lap but was ordered not to due to the team not being able to recharge the KERS system in time for another lap, hence he continued another lap.

1 minute from the end a queue of cars are into parabolica trying to get a clean run for their final runs. Vettel was last but eventually improved on his time again, going 0.338s faster than his own previous best. Hamilton failed to improve and stuck in second, ahead of his teammate and Alonso.