Red Bull drivers Vettel, Webber to start from front row at Hungarian GP
BUDAPEST, Hungary - Red Bull driver Sebastian Vettel secured pole position for the Hungarian Grand Prix on Saturday and will be joined by teammate Mark Webber on the front row.
Vettel posted a time of one minute 18.773 seconds for Sunday's race, 0.411 seconds ahead of Webber.
"The track suits us very well this year. I'm happy," said Vettel, who clinched his fourth straight pole and seventh of the season. "If we have a good start tomorrow, we should have a great race."
Vettel has two wins this season and is fourth in the drivers' standings with 136 points, 21 behind overall leader Lewis Hamilton of McLaren.
Ferrari drivers Fernando Alonso and Felipe Massa will be on the second row. Hamilton, the 2009 winner, will start fifth, followed by Nico Rosberg of Mercedes and the two Renault drivers, Vitaly Petrov and Robert Kubica.
Pedro de la Rosa of Sauber and Nico Hulkenberg of Williams completed the top 10.
The Hungaroring circuit has 14 turns and is one of the slowest on the Formula One calendar, making passing difficult.
"It's not always easy to get around here," Vettel said. "The bumps are quite harsh and the car is very nervous and tends to move a lot."
Alonso, who was 1.214 seconds behind Vettel, was startled by the huge gap between the Red Bull cars and the rest of the field, considering Ferrari's 1-2 finish at the German GP last week.
"I was surprised, no doubt," Alonso said. "(The Red Bulls) were dominant this weekend and untouchable.
"Knowing how the weekend went so far, winning the race would be a dream, but we need to be realistic. We need to know that there are two cars much quicker than us."
Hamilton has two victories and two second-place finishes in the last five races. He was also taken aback by the speed of the Red Bulls, who have 10 poles and five wins in 11 races so far this year between Vettel and Webber.
"The Red Bull is impossible to beat, it's incredible," Hamilton said. "If we have a good start we can challenge them and try to keep them behind us."
Even though he will be on the second row, Alonso will start on the inside, the cleaner part of this notoriously dusty track that offers a better grip than Webber's position on the outside of the front row.
"The dirty side is quite bad, maybe the worst of the calendar," Alonso said. "No doubt that we have a good chance to overtake cars (Sunday) at the start."
Massa was relieved to have gotten through qualifying after his life-threatening crash at the same stage of the 2009 Hungarian GP. Last year, he was hit on the helmet by a spring that broke loose from the car of Rubens Barrichello, causing multiple skull fractures. After surgery, he was placed in an induced coma and spent nine days in a Budapest hospital.
"During qualifying, I did not think about it for a moment as I had too much to do in the car," Massa said. "But now I can tell you that it's a nice feeling being here having completed qualifying."
Defending world champion Jenson Button of McLaren will start 11th after he was knocked out in the second part of qualifying.
"I struggled with my grip in qualifying. It's disappointing because I felt good with the car this morning," Button said. "I couldn't find the balance with the car ... but the good thing is I have two sets of new tires for the race."
Michael Schumacher, the seven-time world champion who returned to F1 this season after retiring for three years, extended his streak of disappointing results by qualifying 14th, his second-worst starting position in 2010.
Sauber driver Kamui Kobayashi was penalized five places by race stewards for failing to stop at the end of the first qualifying session to weigh his car. Kobayashi was initially in 18th place but will now start in next-to-last 23rd place on the last row of the grid, alongside fellow Japanese driver Sakon Yamamoto of HRT.
The 25th F1 race at Hungaroring circuit is the 12th of 19 races this season.
