Vettel beats Hamilton for pole at Spa

Sebastian Vettel

Sebastian Vettel has the measure of just about every driver in the F1 paddock, including McLaren's Lewis Hamilton.

Hamilton looked to have taken pole at Spa on a partially wet track Saturday morning as he turned a lap some 6/10ths up on Mark Webber.

That was until Sebastian Vettel crossed the line not far behind Hamilton when he put up a time 4/10ths faster than Hamilton with a time of 1m48.298s to take his 9th pole of the year for Red Bull keeping the team perfect in 2012 qualifying.

Felipe Massa was fourth and Nico Rosberg fifth.

Jamie Alguersuari was sixth for Toro Rosso with Bruno Senna seventh for Renault and Ferrari's Fernando Alonso eighth.

Sergio Perez will start ninth for Sauber and Vitaly Petrov rounds out the top 10.

Pastor Maldonado could be thrown out of the Belgian grand prix for an incident during qualifying at wet Spa-Francorchamps.

After the Williams driver collided lightly with Lewis Hamilton as the McLaren passed him at the end of Q2, Venezuelan rookie Maldonado crashed into his British rival as they then climbed the hill to Eau Rouge.

"There should never be an incident after the red lights but unfortunately there was," said Hamilton.

The 2008 world champion, who managed to qualify second between the Red Bulls after makeshift repairs, said on the radio that the move was "done deliberately".

Asked if he agrees, Maldonado later said: "No, no I don't. We need to understand what happened."

Hamilton said: "I don't know whether it was intentional or not. I'm just going to wait around here for the stewards to call me up rather than going back to the team."

The British commentary team was convinced; David Coulthard insisting Maldonado "cannot do that on the race track" and Martin Brundle imploring the stewards to "send Maldonado home".

Radio commentator Anthony Davidson was not as strident, admitting he is "not convinced only one car made a change of direction".

The Daily Mirror correspondent Byron Young said: "The only question is will he (Maldonado) have the book thrown at him or a whole library".

Kevin Eason, who writes for The Times, added on Twitter: "We wait now to see whether Maldonado will be clapped in irons and sent into exile, the great daft lump".

Williams' Adam Parr declined to comment, while McLaren team boss Martin Whitmarsh described the incident as "fairly extraordinary".

More to follow…..

Results

*Wheel fell off