Vettel leads Red Bull 1-2 in qualifying

F1 Grand Prix, GP Japan, Circuit Suzuka

Sebastian Vettel has brilliantly converted the potential of the Red Bull RB8 at Suzuka by taking pole position for the Japanese GP. Mark Webber will start from second place. Jenson Button qualified 3rd, but a 5-place penalty means that home driver Kobayashi will start from third place on the grid.

Paul Di Resta is the first to take the track for qualifying, held under sunny skies and at 27°C in Japan.

The force India drivers sets the benchmark with 1:33.667 but is of course quickly beaten by Senna, Raikkonen and Grosjean. He is however quicker than the first laps of Pérez and Petrov. Pérez actually went off and through the gravel in the approach to the first Dagner, but luckily for him he managed to recover.

7 minutes into the session, it's Fernando Alonso who starts his first lap, signalling the moment for the others to start running. Alonso is a tenth slower than Grosjean while Massa posts the quickest time.

While everybody is still running on the harder tyre and completing several laps per stint to get the tyres up to temperature, Vettel posts the fastest time on his second lap. Webber is 3rd, just behind Massa. Hamilton 4th, Button 5th, Grosjean 6th and Alonso 7th.

Less than 5 minutes from the end, Maldonado is then the first to complete a flying lap on the soft yellow tyres, moving up to second place. 2 minutes later the Force India cars are also up there on the softs as they post the 2nd and 4th quickest laps.

Interestingly, many more drivers came out on the option tyre, including Rsoberg, the Ferrari's, both Lotuses and both Saubers, along of course with the backmarker teams. At Mercedes, the intersting bit is Schumacher not using the soft tyre while at Williams, Senna is furious at Vergne for having been blocked badly on his ultimate flying lap. He anger is justified however and led to Senna being eliminated and the incident being reported to the stewards.

This means that eliminated are now Senna, Kovalainen, Glock, De La Rosa, Pic, Petrov, Karthikeyan.

At the start of Q2, home driver Kamui Kobayashi kicks off the action, immediately on the option tyres. He sets a 1:32.368.

3 minutes later, and nearly halfway, Vettel tops the timesheeet, 2 tenths quicker than Button, followed by Webber, HAmilton, Massa, Kobayashi, Grosjean, Alonso, Raikkonen and Pérez. Michael Schumacher has not run yet but is waiting in his cockpit. Clearly the German is looking to save tyres as he is looking into an uphill battle during the race due to a 10-place grid penalty for the collision with Jean-Eric Vergne at the Singapore GP, 2 weeks ago.

Contrary to the current top 3, Alonso and Ferrari go out for another run, during which only Alonso manages to improve, moving up into third. Massa remains 7th. Seconds later Kobayashi moves up into 5th nad then Raikkonen into 3rd. The last man to improve is Grosjean intoi 7th. This effectively pushes out Massa, who is eliminated along with Di Resta, Schumacher, Maldonado, Rosberg, Ricciardo and Vergne.

Although Schumacher will be put back 10 places, Schumacher has again beaten his team mate during qualifying while having used one set of soft tyres less.

In Q3, Raikkonen is the first to set a time, posting 1:32.208 4 minutes into the session. Vettel, who passed the finish line 10 seconds later, is a massive 1.4s faster than the Lotus and immediately sets the pacde. Webber comes to within 0.25s of his teammate while Button posts the third quickest time. Grosjean is 4th, Raikkonen then 5th and Hamilton 6th, a tenth down on Raikkonen. The other 4 drivers have chosen not to come out early.

Pérez is the first to set a time in the second wave, posting the 6th time. At the same moment Raikkonen gets caught in the gravel trap at Spoon curve but manages to get out of it and return to the pits.

Alonso meanwhile posts 7th, a somewhat worrying performance given that his closest competitor in the championship is up in pole position and will possibly go on to win the Japanese GP in dominant fashion.