Vettel holds off Ferraris for Montreal pole

Sebastian Vettel has continued his rich vein of form to take pole position for the Canadian Grand Prix.

The Red Bull Racing star’s best Q3 effort was enough to withstand late challenges from Ferrari team-mates Fernando Alonso and Felipe Massa, who will line-up second and third on the grid respectively.

Despite threatening skies, conditions remained dry for the entire qualifying session, with each of the front-runners completing two runs in Q3.

Mark Webber was fourth fastest in the final qualifying period, managing to get within 0.5s of his team-mate Vettel despite not having KERS available to him during the session.

The Mercedes-powered quartet of Lewis Hamilton, Nico Rosberg, Jenson Button and Michael Schumacher filled fifth through eighth.

The McLaren drivers, who were expected to fight for pole position, are believed to have gambled on a high downforce set-up in order to suit the wet weather predicted for tomorrow’s Grand Prix.

Renault’s Nick Heidfeld and Vitaly Petrov rounded out the top 10, while rookies Paul di Resta and Pastor Maldonado will share the sixth row having narrowly missed out on making Q3.

Pedro de la Rosa will make his first start of the season from 17th position after a tough session that saw the Spaniard make contact with the wall on the outside of Turn 7. Earlier in the day, de la Rosa had brought an early end to Practice 3 by crashing at Turn 4.

Jaime Alguersuari also suffered a challenging qualifying – dropping out in Q1 after complaining of heavy oversteer.

Here are the video highlights

See below for the full qualifying result

Click below to view the Montreal Race Guide