Webber on pole in Germany

Mark Webber maintained RBR’s perfect qualifying record this season in taking pole for the German GP.

The Australian has been quick since the start of the weekend and easily set the fastest time in qualifying, while his teammate failed to make it on the front row.

The World Champion seems to struggle a bit at the Nurburgring and was pipped to 2nd spot by McLaren’s Hamilton. He will still start from the second row of the grid, right behind Webber, and will start alongside Ferrari’s Alonso.

Massa and Rosberg will line up on the third row of the grid. Button and Sutil will start from 7th and 8th while Petrov and Schumacher will form the fifth row.

How the session unfolded :

Q1

Conditions were cool but still dry at the start of qualifying.

The Virgin drivers were first to leave the pits, followed by HRT’s Liuzzi and Lotus’ Chandhok. The rest of the field slowly filtered out and 20 of the 24 cars were out after three minutes.

Nick Heidfeld set the early benchmark but soon lost places to Schumacher, Alonso, Alguersuari and Webber. There was still room for improvement though as they were lapping in the low 34s – compared to the 1’31s of this morning.

Lewis Hamilton and Sebastian Vettel slightly upped the pace as they found more grip from their tyres.

The Red Bull, Ferrari and McLaren drivers battled for top spot on their first run. Alonso narrowly won this round, beating Hamilton and Vettel by a few hundredths. As they were back in the pits, the midfield runners came out to fight for a place in Q2. Most of them used soft tyres for this final run.

Petrov jumped from last to 5th. He was pushed out of the top five by Maldonado, then Heidfeld and Schumacher. Massa also used a set of soft tyre and set the fastest time. Sutil and di Resta also moved up in the top five.

Massa ended on top, ahead of Sutil, Heidfeld, Schumacher and di Resta.

Kobayashi was the unlucky loser and was eliminated alongside the new teams’ drivers.

Q2

Pérez and Massa led the pack out of the pits. Three minutes into the session, Heidfeld, Maldonado, Buemi and Alguersuari were the only drivers left in the pits.

The first round of laps saw Hamilton beating everyone else. Vettel was only 0.019s slowest though. Alonso was third, Webber fourth and Button fifth. They felt safe enough not to have another run and were quite happy to save tyres for Q3 and the race.

The Toro Rosso pair gave up the fight quite early, and Buemi and Alguersuari contented themselves with 16th and 17th on the grid. Pérez, Barrichello, Maldonado, di Resta and Heidfeld all failed to make the cut.

Q3

Alonso and Hamilton kicked off the battle for pole, hoping to end RBR’s streak.

Schumacher, Rosberg and Sutil opted to stay in the pits and watch the battle between Red Bull, Ferrari and McLaren.

Hamilton lapped faster than Alonso, but both RB7 unleashed their potential and stormed at the front. Webber was slightly faster than his teammate Vettel. Hamilton was three tenths down on the slowest of the Red Bulls.

Alonso was fourth ahead of Massa, Button and Petrov.

As the top seven pitted, the three remaining drivers came out for their single run. With less than two minutes remaining, all ten cars were back on track.

Alonso improved and moved up to 3rd while Hamilton moved up to 2nd ahead of Vettel. The World Champion was last to cross the finish line but was unable to beat the Briton’s time, thus having to settle for third on the grid while his teammate took pole position.