Vettel reaches third pole of the season

Sebastian Vettel has clinched his third pole position of the season, in four possible, after the German was the fastest driver at Shanghai's circuit on Saturday's qualifying session. Vettel once again tooked the pole from his team-mate Mark Webber, with the Australian 0.298 seconds off the pace.

The two Red Bull's got the best of the rest of the field with Vettel climbing to top spot with a stunning late lap. Ferrari's Fernando Alonso had to settle for third place. Although he was just 0.2 seconds slower than his team mate Felipe Massa didn't manage to do better than seventh place behind Nico Rosberg and the two McLaren's.

Hamilton possibly had the most disappointing result in Q3 has he had led qualifying in Q1 and Q2. The British driver wasn't able to produce a lap that could challenge the Red Bull's and ended up in sixth place behind his team mate Jenson Button.

Once again Michael Schumacher failed to show a quick pace in qualifying. The seven-time world champion was ninth after the final qualifying session, failing to produce the same performance as Rosberg. The German got stuck in the middle of Renault's Robert Kubica and Force India's Adrian Sutil.

In 11th place Rubens Barrichello almost managed to put a Williams in the top ten, but Sutil's and Schumacher's final laps put him out of the last session. As for his team mate, running wide on the final corner saw Nico Hulkenberg step back into 16th place between the Saubers.

Jaime Alguersuari managed to equal his best performance in qualification when he ran the 12th quickest time of Q2, ahead of his team mate Sebastien Buemi.

Force India's Tonio Liuzzi blamed the traffic delays as he was this week high profile Q1 casualty. He ended up in 18th position lacking 0.111 seconds to make the Q2 cut.

Lotus was once again on the verge of topping the new teams championship until Virgin's Timo Glock made a 0.117 seconds quicker laptime than Jarno Trulli. Kovalainen, di Grassi, Senna and Chandhok completed the last row positions for tomorrow's Chinese GP.