Hamilton takes pole for the Korean Grand Prix

Lewis Hamilton brought Red Bull’s pole dominance to an end in Yeongam, beating Sebastian Vettel in the Korean Grand Prix qualifying session.

The McLaren driver has looked in ominous form since the opening practice session and seemed to have it pretty much under control. He still had to work hard in Q3 as newly-crowned World Champion Vettel pushed him for the very first time this weekend.

But Hamilton held a 0.2s advantage and took pole ahead of the German. Button and Webber will line up on the front row. Massa out-qualified his teammate Alonso and both will start the race from the third row of the grid.

Rosberg and Petrov qualified on the fourth row. Di Resta and Sutil completed the top ten.

How the session panned out :

Q1

The Renault drivers were the first to leave the pits as the session started. A few other drivers came out in the next couple of minutes. The rest of the field slowly filtered out of the pitlane, with the top teams finally sending their cars out.

At this point, Vitaly Petrov held the benchmark. Lewis Hamilton swiftly moved on top and was joined at the front by Alonso, Massa, Button, Webber and Vettel. As the Red Bulls pitted, both Mercedes pushed them out of the top six.

In the meantime, Hamilton further lowered his benchmark and was 0.4s clear of his teammate.

A run on the super-soft tyres eased Petrov up to 3rd place. None of the frontrunners came back on track in the final minutes of this segment of qualifying, feeling they had done enough to make it through to the next step.

Barrichello and Maldonado were left battling it out for the final Q2 spot. The Venezuelan won this intra-team battle, pushing the Brazilian in the dropzone. He was eliminated alongside Kovalainen, Trulli, Glock, d’Ambrosio, Liuzzi and Ricciardo – who didn’t set a time.

Q2

Paul di Resta kicked off the party and was soon joined on track by Hamilton, Button and Webber. More drivers followed and, within four minutes, 14 out of 17 cars were out and running.

Hamilton once again set the benchmark, with a clear margin over his teammate. Vettel and Webber split the McLaren pair but were still seven tenths of a second slower than the pacesetter. Alonso was fifth fastest.

With five minutes left, Schumacher was alone on track and starting his sole flying lap of the session. He moved up to 9th place. Maldonado, Massa and Sutil then left the pits for a final round. The rest of the field – except the top six – soon came out too.

Massa improved to P5, just ahead of his teammate Alonso. Sutil set the ninth fastest time while di Resta went tenth quickest. The Force India drivers’ effort pushed Schumacher out of qualifying. Also eliminated were Alguersuari, Buemi, Kobayashi, Senna, Maldonado and Pérez.

Q3

No waiting game was played in the pole shoot-out and all cars – bar the Force Indias – quickly left the pits.

Unsurprisingly, Hamilton set the reference time but it was much closer this time as Vettel was only three hundredths of a second slower. Webber was third fastest ahead of Button and Alonso.

So the first round went to Hamilton… but the scene was set for a fierce second round.

Rosberg and Sutil opted against joining the party, preferring to save tyres for the race.

Button was fastest of all in S1 but Hamilton was fastest in S2 and S3. Hamilton improved his time and did enough to secure his first pole position of the season. Vettel couldn’t prevent McLaren from breaking Red Bull’s perfect pole record but still prevented the British team from locking out the front row.

Button and Webber qualified on the second row.