Mat Coch writes

Under a sky which threatened rain but ultimately failed to appear, Sebastian Vettel stormed his way to pole position for tomorrow's Malaysian Grand Prix. It wasn't all plain sailing for the championship leader however, having to fend off the advances of an impressively quick McLaren duo and a resurgent teammate before snatching top spot at the very end of the session.

Having enjoyed the least track time of all teams Hispania's Tonio Liuzzi opened proceedings. After a weekend to forget in Australia the Spanish outfit was looking simply to qualify, Liuzzi's opening lap of 1:43.128 somewhere near being competitive even if a long way from startling. Timo Glock lapped some two seconds faster in the Virgin just moments later highlighting the fact that Hispania still has a lot of work ahead of it if they're to challenge even the penultimate row of the grid.

Lewis Hamilton was the first of the front runners to set a time, his 1:37.466 faster than teammate Button by 0.2s though only two thousandths faster than Vettel. In the other Red Bull Mark Webber struggled, his time of 1:38.334 had many scratching their heads with concern that the Australian may be a high profile victim of the first phase of qualifying. While Webber improved his time as the session drew on it failed to improve his position as he languished in fifteenth when the chequered flag fell.

That was long after the drama created by Sebastian Buemi however. Having just set his first flying lap, a 1:38.144 which saw him leap to fourth on the timing screens, the Toro Rosso driver was on another hot lap when a piece of bodywork parted company with the car. It brought out the red flags with twelve minutes left on the clock while marshals cleared the debris from the circuit. Buemi eventually returned to the track having driven back to the pits to have new bodywork fitted, setting a time fast enough to make it through to the second phase.

Once the session had been restarted the Lotus pair took full advantage of a relatively vacant circuit, Kovalainen setting a 1:38.645 to move in to seventh place with teammate Jarno Trulli just over 0.4s slower. The pair ultimately plummeted through the field however as the session became more serious in the closing stages, ending up nineteenth and twentieth respectively.

A 1:36.744 was good enough for provisional pole for Felipe Massa, though he was set on soft tyres suggesting the Italian marque is now less confident than its pre-season form suggested.

The star of the Australian Grand Prix, Renault's Vitaly Petrov, was the last man to set a lap time. With scarcely more than three minutes remaining the Russian soaked up the pressure, setting the fourth fastest time on his only flying lap. Nick Heidfeld too had just a single timed lap, his 1:37.244 just a hundredth slower than the time set by his teammate.

In the closing stages both Michael Schumacher and Nico Rosberg loitered on the brink of the cut off, late laps from the Mercedes pair moving them clear and instead pushing Pastor Maldonado in to the dreaded eighteenth spot. The Venezuelan's disappointment was confirmed when the flag fell, despite a last lap effort to dislodge his teammate from seventeenth. Barrichello was only 0.1s faster on a 1:38.163, both Williams clearly struggling around the Malaysian circuit.

This disappointment for Maldonado could only have been in matched by the relief at Hispania, with both drivers qualifying for the team's first Grand Prix of the season. Narain Karthikeyan set a time almost a second faster than the 107% cut off of 1:43.516, while his Italian teammate was the better part of a second faster with a 1:41.549.