Hamilton beats Massa to German GP pole

The duo had topped a segment apiece in Q1 and Q2, before Massa put his Ferrari on provisional pole with his first flying lap of Q3, beating Hamilton by 0.4 seconds at that stage.

Massa then dug deeper and improved to 1:15.859 with his second lap, putting himself half a second clear of the field and looking assured of pole.

But Hamilton made an even greater gain, going over one second quicker than his previous run to beat Massa by nearly 0.2 seconds.

Heikki Kovalainen went off in the stadium section on his first run, then recovered to take third at the end of the session, alongside another remarkable qualifying effort by Toyota's Jarno Trulli, who took fourth.

Fernando Alonso (Renault) nearly found himself eliminated in Q1, having fallen right down to 17th before leaping back up the order with his last lap.

He then comfortably made it through to the top ten, and put himself in a provisional second place after his first lap before ending up fifth ahead of Kimi Raikkonen, who had an extremely muted session and only managed sixth.

Robert Kubica (BMW) got his weekend back on track following yesterday's crash and this morning's driveshaft failure by taking seventh place, despite a slight scare in Q1 when he only scraped through by 0.018 seconds having lost time behind Giancarlo Fisichella's Force India (which was also on a flying lap).

Present and future Red Bull trio Mark Webber, Sebastian Vettel (Toro Rosso) and David Coulthard completed the top ten, ahead of Timo Glock in the second Toyota

While Kubica overcame his earlier dramas to maintain his long streak of Q3 appearances, his BMW teammate Nick Heidfeld missed the top ten cut again after running slightly wide at the Spitzkehre on his last run, leaving him 12th.

Sebastien Bourdais was also left ruing an error at the same place, ending up 15th on the grid having locked up and slid down the hairpin escape road.

With the Toro Rossos in more competitive shape, Bourdais' error notwithstanding, it was almost inevitable that some of the bigger names would be eliminated in Q1 - especially as a scant 0.22 seconds covered ninth to 16th places in the session.

Williams and Honda both got one driver into Q2 - with Nico Rosberg and Jenson Button sharing row seven - but saw their other car eliminated at the first hurdle as Williams' Kazuki Nakajima and Honda's Rubens Barrichello found themselves 16th and 18th despite only being 0.2 seconds slower than their respective teammates.

Nelson Piquet (Renault) was the other big name Q1 casualty, missing the first cut for the fifth time in his ten Formula One races, and accused Vettel of blocking his fastest lap.

The Force Indias brought up the rear, with Adrian Sutil out-qualifying Fisichella, although even they were just 1.7 seconds off the pace.

Pos  Driver        Team                 Q1        Q2        Q3       Laps
 1.  Hamilton      McLaren-Mercedes     1:15.218  1:14.603  1:15.666  13
 2.  Massa         Ferrari              1:14.921  1:14.747  1:15.859  16
 3.  Kovalainen    McLaren-Mercedes     1:15.476  1:14.855  1:16.143  17
 4.  Trulli        Toyota               1:15.560  1:15.122  1:16.191  21
 5.  Alonso        Renault              1:15.917  1:14.943  1:16.385  19
 6.  Raikkonen     Ferrari              1:15.201  1:14.949  1:16.389  19
 7.  Kubica        BMW Sauber           1:15.985  1:15.109  1:16.521  20
 8.  Webber        Red Bull-Renault     1:15.900  1:15.481  1:17.014  20
 9.  Vettel        Toro Rosso-Ferrari   1:15.532  1:15.420  1:17.244  22
10.  Coulthard     Red Bull-Renault     1:15.975  1:15.338  1:17.503  20
11.  Glock         Toyota               1:15.560  1:15.508            17
12.  Heidfeld      BMW Sauber           1:15.596  1:15.581            14
13.  Rosberg       Williams-Toyota      1:15.863  1:15.633            16
14.  Button        Honda                1:15.993  1:15.701            15
15.  Bourdais      Toro Rosso-Ferrari   1:15.927  1:15.858            15
16.  Nakajima      Williams-Toyota      1:16.083                      10
17.  Piquet        Renault              1:16.189                       7
18.  Barrichello   Honda                1:16.246                      10
19.  Sutil         Force India-Ferrari  1:16.657                      10
20.  Fisichella    Force India-Ferrari  1:16.963                      10

All timing unofficial