Red Bull's Mark Webber took his second pole position in as many races during qualifying for the German Grand Prix and will be joined by Lewis Hamilton's McLaren on the front row.
Sebastian Vettel and Fernando Alonso had to settle for third and fourth after a terrific four-way battle for pole position on the 3.2 mile Nurburgring circuit. Webber dominated the middle sector of the lap, but Hamilton was the surprise of the session with the fastest first and third sectors, which meant he finished just 0.055s off Webber's best time of 1:30.079.
Vettel was 0.137s off Red Bull team-mate Webber and starts off the front row for the first time this season. He will have to fend off Alonso, who failed to live up to the form he showed in Friday practice but is hoping for better long-run pace in the race.
Felipe Massa qualified a solid fifth but was never in contention with the front runners and was over 0.4s off his Ferrari team-mate. Nico Rosberg managed to break into the top six after edging out Jenson Button, who said he just could not find the grip from his McLaren on his final run. He was over a second off the pace of team-mate Hamilton and was clearly disappointed with how the session turned out.
Adrian Sutil impressed in front of his home fans by hauling his Force India onto the fourth row of the grid in eight, ahead of Vitaly Petrov's Renault in ninth. Michael Schumacher only completed one run in Q3 but had a difficult lap with a time well over a second off Mercedes team-mate Rosberg.
Nick Heidfeld will start 11th after missing out in a very competitive Q2 session. Paul di Resta showed promise but will start 12th ahead of the two Williams, Sergio Perez's Sauber and the two Toro Rossos of Sebastien Buemi and Jaime Alguersuari.
Kamui Kobayashi was the midfield casualty in Q1 as everybody up to Massa had to use the soft tyre to ensure they made it through. The good news for the Sauber driver is that he has two sets of fresh soft tyres for the race and can choose which set he starts on.
Heikki Kovalainen was comfortably the fastest of the bottom six, but Lotus team-mate Karun Chandhok was pipped by Virgin's Timo Glock. Daniel Ricciardo got within 0.025 of his HRT team-mate Tonio Liuzzi, but will start ahead of him on Sunday as the Italian has a five-place grid penalty after taking a new gearbox this weekend.
Laurence Edmondson is an assistant editor on ESPNF1
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