» 2013 Brazilian GP: Vettel swims to pole!

Sebastian Vettel has triumphed in sodden conditions to claim pole position for the Brazilian Grand Prix in a disrupted qualifying session at Interlagos.

The Red Bull Racing driver posted a 1:25.479 in a delayed final qualifying session, finishing a whopping six-tenths of a second clear of the rest of the field. Nico Rosberg and Fernando Alonso completed the top-three.

A heavy downpour between Q2 and Q3 forced race control to issue a succession of ten-minute delays to the start of the final shootout for pole. Finally, the go-ahead was given for the pit lane to open almost an hour later, with the final ten runners switching to Pirelli’s full wet tyres, having navigated the preceding two sessions on the Intermediate rubber.

Vettel led the way at the end of the first sequence of runs, but the track moisture improved so quickly that a switch back to the Intermediates was required.

Cue a frantic period of activity before the final runs, and once again it was Vettel who hooked up his final lap to perfection, destroying the opposition with a stunning effort.

Behind the top-three, Mark Webber will start the last Grand Prix of his Formula 1 career from fourth place, with Lewis Hamilton perhaps exceeding his own expectations to qualify fifth ahead of Romain Grosjean

The Toro Rossos of Daniel Ricciardo and Jean-Éric Vergne continued to showcase the great pace in their Toro Rossos with a double top-ten effort in seventh and eighth respectively.

Crowd favourite Felipe Massa was ninth-quickest in his last outing as a Ferrari driver, while Nico Hülkenberg once again made the top-ten shootout, although wound up slowest.

Despite some solid pace in the earlier practice sessions and a top-five performance in Q1, Lotus stand-in Heikki Kovalainen just missed out on a Q3 berth, qualifying eleventh-quickest ahead of Paul di Resta and Valtteri Bottas.

McLaren’s final qualifying session in its woeful MP4-28 pretty much exemplified one of its most forgettable seasons in almost twenty years.

For the first time, neither Sergio Pérez nor Jenson Button made it beyond Q2, with the former succeeding in crashing his car at Turn 5 at the end of the session.

Pérez managed to outqualify Button once again to finish 10-9 ahead in that intra-team battle, but that’s hardly an emphatic statistic given Button’s poor reputation as a one-lap specialist.

Adrian Sutil scraped his off-the-pace Force India into Q2 but went no further, although he managed better than serial Q1 victims, outgoing Williams driver Pastor Maldonado and Sauber’s Esteban Gutiérrez.

The continued precipitation didn’t give the two smallest teams, Caterham and Marussia, an opportunity to get off the back two rows of the grid. Charles Pic claimed qualifying honours among the quartet to outpace teammate Giedo van der Garde, while the Marussia pairing of Jules Bianchi and Max Chilton will start from the back row.

2013 Brazilian Formula 1 Grand Prix – Qualifying Session Times:

	Driver	Team	Time	Gap
1.	Sebastian Vettel	Red Bull Racing Renault RB9	1:26.479
2.	Nico Rosberg	Mercedes AMG Petronas F1W04	1:27.102	+ 0.623
3.	Fernando Alonso	Scuderia Ferrari F138	1:27.539	+ 1.060
4.	Mark Webber	Red Bull Racing Renault RB9	1:27.572	+ 1.093
5.	Lewis Hamilton	Mercedes AMG Petronas F1W04	1:27.677	+ 1.198
6.	Romain Grosjean	Lotus F1 Renault E21	1:27.737	+ 1.258
7.	Jean-Éric Vergne	Scuderia Toro Rosso Ferrari STR8	1:28.052	+ 1.573
8.	Daniel Ricciardo	Scuderia Toro Rosso Ferrari STR8	1:28.081	+ 1.602
9.	Felipe Massa	Scuderia Ferrari F138	1:28.109	+ 1.630
10.	Nico Hülkenberg	Sauber Ferrari C32	1:29.582	+ 3.113
	Q3 Cut-Off – 1:27.441		Time	Gap*
11.	Heikki Kovalainen	Lotus F1 Renault E21	1:27.456	+ 1.295
12.	Paul di Resta	Force India Mercedes VJM06	1:27.798	+ 1.637
13.	Valtteri Bottas	Williams Renault FW35	1:27.954	+ 1.793
14.	Sergio Pérez	McLaren Mercedes MP4-28	1:28.269	+ 2.108
15.	Jenson Button	McLaren Mercedes MP4-28	1:28.308	+ 2.147
16.	Adrian Sutil	Force India Mercedes VJM06	1:28.586	+ 2.425
	Q2 Cut-Off – 1:27.209		Time	Gap**
17.	Pastor Maldonado	Williams Renault FW35	1:27.367	+ 2.025
18.	Esteban Gutiérrez	Sauber Ferrari C32	1:27.445	+ 2.103
19.	Charles Pic	Caterham Renault CT03	1:27.843	+ 2.501
20.	Giedo van der Garde	Caterham Renault CT03	1:28.320	+ 2.978
21.	Jules Bianchi	Marussia Racing Cosworth MR02	1:28.366	+ 3.024
22.	Max Chilton	Marussia Racing Cosworth MR02	1:28.950	+ 3.608