Monza: Sebastian Vettel ended Lewis Hamilton's run of four straight pole positions on Saturday when he secured the prime starting spot for Sunday's Italian Grand Prix.
It was Vettel's fourth pole this year and the 40th of his career, setting him up to extend his 46-point lead ahead of Fernando Alonso in the drivers championship.
Meanwhile, Vettel's Red Bull team-mate Mark Webber was just behind at the second place.
Hamilton slid off the circuit during Q2 and failed to make the cut to the top 10 shoot-out, eventually qualifying in 12th.
Sebastian Vettel said after the qualifying, “We didn’t expect to be so strong here, with both cars on the front row. It’s due to hard work from everyone in the team working long hours; we’ve had years where we’ve had a good car, but not a car that’s competitive in low down force trim, so in that regard we did our homework. This circuit has been a bit up and down for us, but this year it’s surely been more up so far! The car feels great, but let’s see what we can do tomorrow; we don’t get any points from today.”
Mark Webber said, “After yesterday we thought we could challenge for the front row, but you never know and as we saw in Belgium and today, the grid can sometimes get a bit mixed up. But overall we stayed strong and have to focus on ourselves. The guys did a very good job; it’s not an easy track to pull everything together over one lap. The result is the maximum for the team and it was pretty much the maximum for me today; Seb has always been very strong here and he’s a tough nut to crack at this venue. I hope to have a strong race from there tomorrow.”