Vettel secures yet another pole position ahead of European GP

The German leads an all-Red Bull front row ahead of team-mate Mark Webber, who was only fifth after the first Q3 runs, but was the only man to improve at the second attempt and duly jumped to second.

Lewis Hamilton completes the top three in the best McLaren, ahead of the Ferraris of Fernando Alonso and Felipe Massa. Montreal winner Jenson Button (McLaren) will start sixth.

The Mercedes chose to only make one Q3 run and filled row four, with Nico Rosberg a scant 0.009 seconds ahead of team-mate Michael Schumacher.

Fifth row men Nick Heidfeld (Renault) and Adrian Sutil (Force India) both made the Q3 cut but did not set times - Sutil sitting the session out, and Heidfeld going out briefly at the end before aborting his run.

Sutil's last-minute progress into Q3 came at the expense of Renault's Vitaly Petrov - which was the only real upset of the first two thirds of qualifying.

Paul di Resta joined the Russian on row six in the second Force India, ahead of Rubens Barrichello (Williams) and Kamui Kobayashi (Sauber).

The second Williams of Pastor Maldonado caused a brief red flag in Q2 when it ground to a halt in the middle of the track. But he had already done a time good enough to secure 15th on the grid ahead of Sauber's Sergio Perez and Toro Rosso's Sebastien Buemi.

After some fleeting scares for Webber, Kobayashi and Massa (who got himself out of danger by sticking on soft tyres and blasting to the Q1 top spot by a huge margin), it was Toro Rosso's Jaime Alguersuari who was again the upper midfield driver exiting in Q1. He ended up 18th ahead of the Lotus duo - Heikki Kovalainen in front of Jarno Trulli, who spun on his final Q1 run.

Everyone comfortably made the 107 per cent qualifying cut, with Tonio Liuzzi's Hispania splitting the Virgins as he edged ahead of Jerome D'Ambrosio.

Pos  Driver                Team                  Time          Gap   
 1.  Sebastian Vettel      Red Bull-Renault      1m36.975
 2.  Mark Webber           Red Bull-Renault      1m37.163  +  0.188
 3.  Lewis Hamilton        McLaren-Mercedes      1m37.380  +  0.405
 4.  Fernando Alonso       Ferrari               1m37.454  +  0.479
 5.  Felipe Massa          Ferrari               1m37.535  +  0.560
 6.  Jenson Button         McLaren-Mercedes      1m37.645  +  0.670
 7.  Nico Rosberg          Mercedes              1m38.231  +  1.256
 8.  Michael Schumacher    Mercedes              1m38.240  +  1.265
 9.  Nick Heidfeld         Renault               No time
10.  Adrian Sutil          Force India-Mercedes  No time
Q2 cut-off time: 1m39.034s                                   Gap **
11.  Vitaly Petrov         Renault              1m39.068s  +  1.763
12.  Paul di Resta         Force India-Mercedes 1m39.422s  +  2.117
13.  Rubens Barrichello    Williams-Cosworth    1m39.489s  +  2.184
14.  Kamui Kobayashi       Sauber-Ferrari       1m39.525s  +  2.220
15.  Pastor Maldonado      Williams-Cosworth    1m39.645s  +  2.340
16.  Sergio Perez          Sauber-Ferrari       1m39.657s  +  2.352
17.  Sebastien Buemi       Toro Rosso-Ferrari   1m39.711s  +  2.406
Q1 cut-off time: 1m40.131s                                    Gap *
18.  Jaime Alguersuari     Toro Rosso-Ferrari   1m40.232   +  1.819
19.  Heikki Kovalainen     Lotus-Renault        1m41.664   +  3.251
20.  Jarno Trulli          Lotus-Renault        1m42.234   +  3.821
21.  Timo Glock            Virgin-Cosworth      1m42.553   +  4.140
22.  Tonio Liuzzi          HRT-Cosworth         1m43.584   +  5.171
23.  Jerome D'Ambrosio     Virgin-Cosworth      1m43.735   +  5.322
24.  Narain Karthikeyan    HRT-Cosworth         1m44.363   +  5.950

107% time: 1m45.301s