Sebastian Vettel claimed a last-gasp pole position in Shanghai on Saturday, and will line up at the head of the field for Formula One's Chinese Grand Prix. It's Vettel's third pole position in four races, with his Red Bull teammate Mark Webber qualifying second.

Vettel had appeared to be struggling over the course of the weekend. Yet when it mattered most, in the dying moments of the final segment of qualifying ("Q3"), he found another gear and laid down comfortably the fastest lap of the entire weekend.

"How do you do that?" Vettel's bewildered race engineer asked over team radio, immediately after the German lit up the timing screens.

"Woohoo! Yes, baby!" replied the 22-year old.

Red Bull have dominated qualifying this season, with one of their cars starting at the front for every race so far. However, in China it looked like McLaren's Lewis Hamilton had the upper hand, especially in the high-speed sections of the circuit.

"What a qualifying session, it was pretty incredible," Vettel said in the press conference afterwards. "At the start of the session I wasn't entirely happy, especially in the first sector of the lap, but by the end I was totally satisfied with the car, and was the quickest driver across almost the entire lap."

"I want to say thanks to the mechanics, they certainly didn't get a lunch break today! They had to work flat out between practice and qualifying to fix the problems we were having with the car but, as always, they did a great job."

If Vettel - who won the last race in Malaysia - can convert his qualifying performance into another win on Sunday, he would be guaranteed to take the lead in the world championship, regardless of where his competition finishes.

Mixed fortunes at Mercedes

Behind the Red Bull duo, Ferrari's Spanish double world champion, Fernando Alonso, secured third place, with Mercedes driver Nico Rosberg an impressive fourth.

"I'd say I'm pretty happy," Rosberg told German television. "This morning it looked much worse for us, but now we're really close to the front. Red Bull seems to have a bit of an advantage, but then there's us and Ferrari not far behind."

However, Mercedes' other German driver, seven-time champion Michael Schumacher, qualified far behind his teammate in ninth, seven tenths of a second (a deceptively long time in Formula One terms) adrift of Rosberg.

"I know where I lost those seven tenths, so I can handle it," Schumacher said. "But of course it's a pity. Nico has a well set-up car, and he got the best out of it, and obviously I would have liked to achieve the same. I shall try to do so in the race tomorrow."

So far, either through reliability problems or a lack of speed, the highly anticipated return of Schumacher to F1 after three years away has not delivered impressive results - with qualifying pace arguably his biggest problem.

Sutil impresses again

Germany's other strong qualifier was Adrian Sutil, driving for the relatively small Force India team. The 27-year old, who has never scored a top three finish in his career, starts just behind F1's most successful driver Schumacher in tenth position.

Sutil has been in the top ten at the start of every race this year, by far the best performance of his career to date, but the other cars ahead of him are likely to prove too strong in the race on Sunday.

The McLaren drivers Jenson Button and Lewis Hamilton - who were tipped to shine in Shanghai - line up fifth and sixth, Ferrari's Felipe Massa starts seventh, and Robert Kubica grabbed eighth place for Renault.

Germany's rookie Nico Hulkenberg is a rather disappointing sixteenth on the grid for Williams, with countryman Timo Glock nineteenth in his Virgin Racing car. Glock wins the dubious honor, once again, of being the fastest driver at any of Formula One's three new teams - all of whom have been well adrift of the rest of the field so far this season.

Author: Mark Hallam
Editor: Sonia Phalnikar