Hamilton ends Red Bull's pole run

The McLaren driver maintained the form that has seen him take pole in Montreal on every appearance there to come from behind to overcome the Red Bulls in the final moments of Q3.

Hamilton looked unbeatable at the start of the final qualifying segment, setting a 1m15.500s that no one could get near initially.

But on the second runs both Webber and Fernando Alonso (Ferrari) jumped ahead of Hamilton, with Alonso running soft tyres like the McLaren but Webber opting for the harder Bridgestones with race durability in mind.

Hamilton's first attempt to retaliate fell short, but he dug deeper still on his last run and grabbed pole by an ultimately comfortable 0.268s. He then had to park on the circuit having run too short of fuel on his in-lap.

Webber held on to second, with his team-mate Sebastian Vettel leaping to third after struggling earlier in Q3 and having to abandon one lap when he went straight over the final chicane.

Alonso ended up fourth, ahead of Jenson Button in the second McLaren, while Tonio Liuzzi took a superb sixth for Force India.

Felipe Massa (Ferrari) and Robert Kubica (Renault) share row four, followed by Adrian Sutil in the second Force India and Nico Rosberg in the best of the Mercedes.

The shock of the session was Michael Schumacher's failure to get into Q3 for the first time in his comeback season. The Mercedes driver was only 0.4s adrift of team-mate Nico Rosberg, but that translated to six places in Q2, as Schumacher was edged outside the top ten in the final seconds and then made a mistake at the final chicane when trying to respond.

As the Williams of Rubens Barrichello and Nico Hulkenberg made last gasp improvement to grab the row six spots, Schumacher found himself pushed right back to 13th, where he will start alongside Vitaly Petrov's Renault and in front of the Toro Rossos.

At the back, it was both a terrible day for Sauber and a great one for Lotus. Pedro de la Rosa was only 17th while Kamui Kobayashi was knocked out in Q1 - and had to dig deep to take 18th back from the flying Lotus of Heikki Kovalainen, who was only 0.2s slower in the end as he beat team-mate Jarno Trulli by 0.4s in the new team pack battle.

Pos  Driver         Team                   Q1        Q2         Q3
 1.  Hamilton       McLaren-Mercedes       1:15.889  1:15.528  1:15.105
 2.  Webber         Red Bull-Renault       1:16.423  1:15.692  1:15.373
 3.  Vettel         Red Bull-Renault       1:16.129  1:15.556  1:15.420
 4.  Alonso         Ferrari                1:16.171  1:15.597  1:15.435
 5.  Button         McLaren-Mercedes       1:16.371  1:15.742  1:15.520
 6.  Liuzzi         Force India-Mercedes   1:17.086  1:16.171  1:15.648
 7.  Massa          Ferrari                1:16.673  1:16.314  1:15.688
 8.  Kubica         Renault                1:16.370  1:15.682  1:15.715
 9.  Sutil          Force India-Mercedes   1:16.495  1:16.295  1:15.881
10.  Rosberg        Mercedes               1:16.350  1:16.001  1:16.071
11.  Barrichello    Williams-Cosworth      1:16.880  1:16.434
12.  Hulkenberg     Williams-Cosworth      1:16.770  1:16.438
13.  Schumacher     Mercedes               1:16.598  1:16.492
14.  Petrov         Renault                1:16.569  1:16.844
15.  Buemi          Toro Rosso-Ferrari     1:17.356  1:16.928
16.  Alguersuari    Toro Rosso-Ferrari     1:17.027  1:17.029
17.  de la Rosa     Sauber-Ferrari         1:17.611  1:17.384
18.  Kobayashi      Sauber-Ferrari         1:18.019
19.  Kovalainen     Lotus-Cosworth         1:18.237
20.  Trulli         Lotus-Cosworth         1:18.698
21.  Glock          Virgin-Cosworth        1:18.941
22.  Senna          HRT-Cosworth           1:19.484
23.  di Grassi      Virgin-Cosworth        1:19.675
24.  Chandhok       HRT-Cosworth           1:27.757

All Timing Unofficial