Vettel blames traffic for missed chance

The Red Bull driver, who lies third in the world championship, held provisional pole position until the final minute of qualifying, but was knocked down to back of the second row after the chequered flag fell by Jenson Button, Kimi Raikkonen and Rubens Barrichello.

He was then unable to improve his time on his own final flying lap after becoming stuck behind the Williams driver during the final few corners.

"It was a shame today as the car was good and we could have done better," said the German.

"As I came out of Rascasse, Nakajima was almost stopped on the circuit and, you know, if you want to get everything right here in qualifying, you have to have a clear lap. This wasn't the case on the last half of my lap when I was stuck in traffic."

Vettel's Australian team-mate Mark Webber qualified his car eighth - over seven tenths of a second off pole. But he believes that a clever race strategy will enable him to make up ground during the race.

"I'm reasonably happy with what I did today, maybe we could have done a different strategy in Q3 - it was my idea to do one run, but maybe we should have done two," he said.

"There are some different ideas going round about what tyres everyone will start the race on, as the hard and soft tyres have different characteristics in race conditions. We have a reasonable strategy for tomorrow."