Vettel emerges on top in tight qualifying

F1 Grand Prix, GP Europe, Valencia Street Circuit

Sebastian Vettel posted the fastest time in today's qualifying session for the European GP. He went 3 tenths faster than his closest competitor Lewis Hamilton. Pastor Maldonado will start tomorrow's GP from third place, ahead of both Lotus cars.

Track temperature is 43°C at the start of qualifying, 8°C higher than it was during FP3. The sun is blistering hot here and teams will be looking to save tyres as they could quickly wear out or overheat.

As the first session is kicked off, Ricciardo is the first out on track, followed by Maldonado and Pic. The latter is also the only driver to run for Marussia as Timo Glock is sidelined due to a stomach problem that doesn't seem to get resolved. Nothing is decided yet for the race.

Maldonado immediately ruined his first lap as he went wide after the bridge, while Fernando Alonso a few moments had some oversteer while turning into turn 15 after setting the fastest S1 thus far.

7 minutes into the session, Massa is on top of the timesheet, ahead of Raikkonen, Di Resta, Grosjean and Pérez. All these cars are currently running on the harder tyre. Another minute later Alonso completes his second flyer and moves into P4 while Michael Schumacher posts the fastest time.

With 9 minutes left, Hamilton posts the fastest time, followed by Massa and Alonso. The two Ferrari's are completing a lot of laps on a single set of primes, hoping it will be enough to go through to Q2.

With 5 minutes left, Schumacher is 4th, Raikkonen 5th, Button 6th and Vettel 7th.

Moments later Mark Webber emerges on track on the option tyres. While he had trouble finding pace and posts the 16th time only, Di Resta is flying on the options and posts the best time so far, matching what he did in the morning.

Webber's struggle continued from that first lap on and eventually ended up in 19th, getting eliminated early on. While Kovalainen posted a decent final qualifying lap to move through to Q2, Jean-Eric Vergne is out, along with Webber, Petrov, De La Rosa, Katrhikeyan, Pic and of course Glock who didn't set a time.

Q2 gets going with both Ferrari drivers again early out on track. They are both out on the same set of primes they completes Q1 with. Alonso is in after a single lap and rapidly drops down the ranking order as all other cars immediately opt for runs on option tyres.

Raikkonen is fastest early on, improved by Rosberg a few moments later. Button's first attempt is good for 3rd.

With 5 minutes to go, Alonso starts his first lap in Q2 on the options. One and a half minutes later he is 6th on the timesheet, just 2 tenths off the best time of Rosberg. Di Resta meanwhile put himself in P2 while his teammate Hulkenberg also improves a bit later and goes marginally quicker than the Spaniard.

At the chequered flag, Grosjean improves to 1st, ahead of Rosberg, Di Resta and Vettel. This means Alonso is out in P11, ahead of Schumacher, Massa, Senna, Pérez, Kovalainen and Ricciardo.

Time differences were impressively little during Q2 with Grosjean's best being 1:38.489. Alonso in fact is eliminated by 0.005s and posted a 1:38.707, little more than 3 tenths off of Grosjean.

As Q3 starts, both Force India cars are out on the harder prime tyres while everybody else opted for the softer and quicker options.

Raikkonen is the first man on track and sets 1:38.966. Rosberg goes fastest 10 seconds later, with the McLarens posting times in between the initial ones. Maldonado also went out early on but was too much on the kerb on the final right hander and hence missed the last corner. He therefore chose to return to the pits immediately and put all hopes on his second attempt.

In fact, with just 3:30 to go, only 4 drivers have set a time.

Grosjean then is the first out on track in the second part of Q3 and immediately posts the best time, thanks to a purple first and third sector. One minute later Maldonado is on provisional pole, improving Grosjean by one tenth.

Vettel though blasted everyone away at the end of the session by topping everyone by 4 tenths, an impressive gap given the closeness of this session. Lewis Hamilton will start from P2, ahead of Maldonado, Grosjean and Raikkonen.