Button flies to Spanish GP pole

The championship leader had appeared to be struggling to match his Brawn team-mate Barrichello's pace for most of the build-up, and fell as low as eighth as others completed their final runs in Q3.

But Button crossed the line to start his last lap just as the chequered flag fell, and proceeded to snatch pole away from Vettel (Red Bull) by 0.133 seconds.

Barrichello briefly held provisional pole before Button and Vettel improved, leaving the Brazilian third.

Felipe Massa showed Ferrari's best form of the year to take fourth after being fastest in morning practice and Q1.

That made up for his team-mate Kimi Raikkonen's disastrous session. The Finn had a poor first Q1 lap - 0.8s slower than team-mate Massa's session-topping effort - but still felt safe enough not to go for a second run. That proved complacent, for he was then pushed down to 16th and out of qualifying.

Mark Webber put the second Red Bull fifth on the grid, with late gains from Toyota's Timo Glock and Jarno Trulli pushing home crowd favourite down Fernando Alonso down to eighth for Renault.

Friday pace-setter Nico Rosberg was correct in his prediction that he would not challenge for pole. The Williams driver was only ninth, ahead of BMW's Robert Kubica.

Nelson Piquet had his best qualifying performance of the year and was on course for a top ten start until the final seconds of Q2, when other drivers' improvements edged the Renault drivers back to 12th, between Kazuki Nakajima (Williams) and Nick Heidfeld's repaired BMW Sauber.

McLaren fell back after its promising Bahrain weekend. Lewis Hamilton could only manage 14th, while Heikki Kovalainen fared worse still and was only quick enough for 18th position.

Sebastien Buemi again outperformed his Toro Rosso team-mate Sebastien Bourdais as they took 15th and 17th on the grid, and the Force Indias remained on the back row, Adrian Sutil half a second quicker than Giancarlo Fisichella this time.

Pos  Driver       Team                       Q1        Q2        Q3
 1.  Button       Brawn-Mercedes        (B)  1:20.707  1:20.192  1:20.527
 2.  Vettel       Red Bull-Renault      (B)  1:20.715  1:20.220  1:20.660
 3.  Barrichello  Brawn-Mercedes        (B)  1:20.808  1:19.954  1:20.762
 4.  Massa        Ferrari               (B)  1:20.484  1:20.149  1:20.934
 5.  Webber       Red Bull-Renault      (B)  1:20.689  1:20.007  1:21.049
 6.  Glock        Toyota                (B)  1:20.877  1:20.107  1:21.247
 7.  Trulli       Toyota                (B)  1:21.189  1:20.420  1:21.254
 8.  Alonso       Renault               (B)  1:21.186  1:20.509  1:21.392
 9.  Rosberg      Williams-Toyota       (B)  1:20.745  1:20.256  1:22.558
10.  Kubica       BMW-Sauber            (B)  1:20.931  1:20.408  1:22.685
11.  Nakajima     Williams-Toyota       (B)  1:20.818  1:20.531
12.  Piquet       Renault               (B)  1:21.128  1:20.604
13.  Heidfeld     BMW-Sauber            (B)  1:21.095  1:20.676
14.  Hamilton     McLaren-Mercedes      (B)  1:20.991  1:20.805
15.  Buemi        Toro Rosso-Ferrari    (B)  1:21.033  1:21.067
16.  Raikkonen    Ferrari               (B)  1:21.291
17.  Bourdais     Toro Rosso-Ferrari    (B)  1:21.300
18.  Kovalainen   McLaren-Mercedes      (B)  1:21.675
19.  Sutil        Force India-Mercedes  (B)  1:21.742
20.  Fisichella   Force India-Mercedes  (B)  1:22.204

All Timing Unofficial