Webber on pole in a thrilling rain affected Malaysian Qualifying

Mark Webber on Pole for Sunday's Malaysian GP - Photo: AFP

A sensational Qualifying session ahead of Sunday’s race saw both Ferrari’s of Alonso and Massa and also the McLaren of Lewis Hamilton failing to make it into Q2 .

Light rain started falling in the early stages of Q1, the teams who put in laps early benefited. Unfortunately for Ferrari, they waited to long into the session to go out on track and by the time their cars were sent out, they were lapping well under the target time. McLaren also had the same problem, however Jensen Button set a good enough time to put him through till Q2, but aquapolaned off the wet track after he set his lap and was unabled to rejoin the track, relegating him to the bottom of Q2 and qualifying in 17th position.

Lewis Hamilton separates both the Ferraris of Alonso in p19 and Massa in p21. This is the worst qualifying result for Ferrari and McLaren all season.

Q2 saw most drivers start on Intermediate tyres. The rain had eased and the track. Adrian Sutil was the early pace setter but was quickly upstaged by Schumacher, Kubica and Hulkenberg. As the track dried it became clear the inters were needed to set good pace. Vettel pitted for inters and as a result he was able to respond  with the quickest lap time of the session.  Webber finished Q2 in 7th place, after struggling to show similar pace to Vettel, however it was Michael Schumacher who got lucky and only just held on the the final position, closing out the top 10 to go in to Q3.

As the lights went green for Q3, there was a very long line of traffic. Everyone was keen to get out early and set a good time before the rain got even heavier. The rain did get very heavy and the session was red flagged before anybody had a chance to set a time. This meant there would be only just over 7 minutes left in the session when it is restarted.

When the session was finally restarted, the rain had stopped falling, however there was a lot of standing water. Nobody hung around in the pit garage very long, with only 7 mins left, all the remaining 10 cars went out quickly. With the standing water on parts of the track all the cars except for Mark Webber elected to use full wets.

Sutil and Hulkenberg again proved to be quick in the wet with early pace as Mark Webber struggled on his out lap on cold intermediate tyres. However on Marks first flying lap his sectors were suddenly very quick and in no time he posted the quickest time of the session. He stayed out for a second flying lap and bettered his pole time by 1.1 seconds. It was obvious that nobody on full wets was able to break Webbers time, his gamble on inters paid off. Team principal Christian Horner confirmed that the decision to use inters was Webber’s own.

Mark Webber is joined on the front row by Nico Rosberg in the Mercedes and Marks RedBull team mate just behind in P3. RedBull once again dominating the qualifying for the seccond race in a row. However whether or not RedBull’s qualifying performance is able to be translated into a similar finish in the race is yet to be seen this season.

With more rain forecast for tomorrow’s race, it will come done to tyre strategy and cautious and consistent driving to win the race. Many teams will be analysing closely the performance of the inters vs the full wets in the constantly changing Malaysian conditions.

The final Qualifying times from all sessions is below: