» 2012 Korean GP: Webber claims brilliant pole!

While a Red Bull Racing front-row lockout was expected, few would have predicted that the pole-winner for the Korean Grand Prix would have been Mark Webber. The Australian delivered a stunning lap when it counted to pip team-mate Sebastian Vettel to top spot by a scant seven-hundredths of a second.

Vettel had been comfortably quickest in the opening sessions and looked on course for another qualifying rout until the final seconds of the top-ten shootout. Webber pulled out everything to deliver three perfect sectors of the five-kilometre Yeongyam circuit, improving his best lap time by half a second to claim top spot and give the team’s engine supplier, Renault, its 200th Formula 1 pole.

Vettel tried to respond, but a miscommunication with his engineers yielded a less-than-ideal first sector split, and it meant that he was unable to improve on his first flying lap-time set earlier in the session.

Webber’s result was all the more impressive given the problems he faced in today’s earlier practice session, and the result marked his first genuine pole position – having inherited pole at Monaco – of the 2012 season.

Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso were unable to challenge the Red Bulls, and both will start from the second row of the grid. Hamilton, in particular, was lucky to make it beyond Q1, with the McLaren team electing not to fit a set of super-soft tyres to his car. But for a botched lap by Bruno Senna, and the Englishman would have found himself eliminated at the first hurdle.

Lotus showed steadily improving form with their unique Coanda exhaust layout, with Kimi Raikkonen and Romain Grosjean claiming fifth and seventh, respectively, sandwiching Felipe Massa on the grid.

The top ten was completed by a trio of Germans, with Nico Hulkenberg getting his Force India ahead of Nico Rosberg and Michael Schumacher’s Mercedes entries in Q3.

Qualifying itself produced little in the way of major upsets, although Jenson Button proved the exception when he failed to make the Q3 cut by just 0.005 seconds, having to back off on his final flying lap when yellow flags were unfurled after Daniel Ricciardo was forced to park his Toro Rosso just off the racing line when it struck mechanical troubles.

The closeness of the midfield presented fans with another closely-fought affair in Q2, and there were several drivers who had plenty of grounds to come up with their own hard luck story as to why they failed to make the final round of ten drivers. From Jenson Button in eleventh down to Pastor Maldonado in fifteenth, all missed out on Q3 by less than three-tenths of a second.

As usual, the entries from Caterham, Marussia and HRT formed a Noah’s Ark formation on the timing screens and were again eliminated at the first hurdle. Interestingly, both Vitaly Petrov and Charles Pic managed to outperform their more established team-mates when it counted, qualifying 19th and 21st respectively, although the latter will take a grid penalty for an engine change.

Narain Karthikeyan will have to rely on the discretion of the FIA Stewards panel to be allowed to take the grid for tomorrow’s race after he failed to post a time during the opening phase of qualifying. The Indian driver’s HRT suffered a major brake failure at the end of the long back straight, and he was fortunate not to collect Nico Hulkenberg as he skidded helplessly into the Turn 3 run-off.

2012 Korean Formula 1 Grand Prix – Qualifying Session Times:

	Driver	Team	Time	Gap
1.	Mark Webber	Red Bull Racing Renault RB8	1:37.242
2.	Sebastian Vettel	Red Bull Racing Renault RB8	1:37.316	+ 0.074
3.	Lewis Hamilton	McLaren Mercedes MP4-27	1:37.469	+ 0.227
4.	Fernando Alonso	Scuderia Ferrari F2012	1:37.534	+ 0.292
5.	Kimi Räikkönen	Lotus F1 Renault E20	1:37.625	+ 0.383
6.	Felipe Massa	Scuderia Ferrari F2012	1:37.884	+ 0.642
7.	Romain Grosjean	Lotus F1 Renault E20	1:37.934	+ 0.692
8.	Nico Hülkenberg	Force India Mercedes VJM05	1:38.266	+ 1.024
9.	Nico Rosberg	Mercedes AMG F1 W03	1:38.361	+ 1.119
10.	Michael Schumacher	Mercedes AMG F1 W03	1:38.513	+ 1.271
	Q2 Cut-Off – 1:38.436		Time	Gap
11.	Jenson Button	McLaren Mercedes MP4-27	1:38.441	+ 0.005
12.	Sergio Pérez	Sauber Ferrari C31	1:38.460	+ 0.019
13.	Kamui Kobayashi	Sauber Ferrari C31	1:38.594	+ 0.153
14.	Paul di Resta	Force India Mercedes VJM05	1:38.643	+ 0.202
15.	Pastor Maldonado	Williams Renault FW34	1:38.725	+ 0.284
16.	Daniel Ricciardo	Scuderia Toro Rosso Ferrari STR7	1:39.084	+ 0.643
17.	Jean-Éric Vergne	Scuderia Toro Rosso Ferrari STR7	1:39.340	+ 0.889
	Q1 Cut-Off – 1:39.180		Time	Gap
18.	Bruno Senna	Williams Renault FW34	1:39.443	+ 0.263
19.	Vitaly Petrov	Caterham Renault CT01	1:40.207	+ 1.027
20.	Heikki Kovalainen	Caterham Renault CT01	1:40.333	+ 1.153
21.	Charles Pic*	Marussia Racing Cosworth MR01	1:41.317	+ 2.137
22.	Timo Glock	Marussia Racing Cosworth MR01	1:41.371	+ 2.191
23.	Pedro de la Rosa	HRTF1 Cosworth F112	1:42.881	+ 3.701
	107% Cut-Off – 1:45.082		Time	Gap
DNQ.	Narain Karthikeyan	HRTF1 Cosworth F112	no time