Bull run starts all over again

Red Bulls Mark Webber will start from third with Jenson Button of McLaren fourth as he attempts to win the race for a third straight year. Hamiltons performance to split the Red Bulls was an impressive one,and McLaren reaped the reward for making bold changes to the car after trouble offseason testing.

It was a very brave and tough decision for us to pull back from what wed been developing over the winter test, Hamilton said. And after the last test to come back and decide we were going to go in another direction. Since Ive been here,weve never ever done that before.

Fernando Alonso qualified fifth a worrying 1.4 seconds behind Vettel and team mate Felipe Massa was eighth,while Mercedes Michael Schumacher was a disappointing 11th.

The Red Bulls and McLarens were consistently fastest after the first Q1 session,switching between the firmer prime tires and the options to try and feel their way to faster lap combinations. There may be more surprises in store for race day after the Red Bull drivers revealed they did not use the added thrust of their KERS systems at all in qualifying.

No Narain on grid

Hispania became the first team to miss out on the race under the reintroduced 107 percent rule,after both its drivers failed post a time under the cut off mark set at seven percent higher than the fastest time in Q1.

With the cut-off time set at 1:31.266,Vitantonio Liuzzi could manage only 1:32.978 and Narain Karthikeyan had 1:34.293. Despite a request from the team pleading exceptional circumstances for the poor times,race stewards decided to enforce the rule and exclude the team from the race.