Turkey GP: Vettel pips two Brawns for pole

Sebastian Vettel signals he is No.1 and will start from pole Sunday

Red Bull

Fastest in all three qualifying sessions, F1's best driver, Sebastian Vettel, put his Red Bull Renault on pole for the Turkish GP ahead of the season dominating Brawn Mercedes cars of Jenson Button and Rubens Barrichello.

Vettel had been quickest in both Q1 and Q2, and then led the early running in Q3 by less than a tenth of a second over Button's Brawn and Jarno Trulli's Toyota. Vettel's Red Bull teammate Mark Webber will start 4th Sunday.

It looked like Button might be on course for his fifth pole of the season, but Vettel got him on his final lap by 0.105 seconds.

The German, 28 points behind Jenson Button in the drivers' standings, pipped the championship leader to the front of the first row at the Istanbul Park circuit.

"If early season form is anything to go by, the Red Bulls may be lighter than we are but we will have to see," Ross Brawn, referring to the fact that the FIA will publish the cars' qualifying weights later on.

"After my engine problems yesterday, I was confident we could do something today," Vettel said. "The last couple of races have not gone our way but finally we are ahead of the white-car guys!"

When Sebastian Vettel is on pole, he wins

Red Bull

Vettel has two F1 race wins to his credit and both times he started from pole, so his chances look good on Sunday.

"I have a good race car," said Vettel.

Jarno Trulli ended up fifth, eight places ahead of his teammate Timo Glock.

Ferrari only managed sixth and seventh positions, as Felipe Massa never looked like challenging for a fourth straight pole at the track despite his strong practice form. Massa will start 7th and Raikkonen 6th in their Ferraris.

F1's defending World Champion, Lewis Hamilton, once again didn't look as great as the British media pumps him up to be as he never made it out of Q1, beat by his McLaren teammate Kovalainen. Unable to help develop the McLaren into a winning car, he and the team are lost despite their vast financial resources. Hamilton will start 16th, Kovalainen two spots ahead in 14th.

Hamilton groaned: "Welcome to my world. It's the car. It has got slower and slower throughout the weekend as the track has got hotter.

"It looked great yesterday, but this morning it didn't look fantastic."

And then clearly writing off this season, he added: "We will bounce back next year."

And to think, just last year the British media were predicted Hamilton would surpass Michael Schumacher’s records of over 90 GP wins and 7 world titles. Too funny.

Sebastian Bourdais, whose F1 days appear numbered, was dead last.

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