“Q3 went well for us today,” said Webber afterwards, “there wasn’t much more I could get out of the car. It was very tight between Sebastian, the two Brawn GP drivers and I on lap times but I’m happy with my position for tomorrow’s race.

“It’s a really demanding race for us in hot conditions and it’ll be interesting to see who elects to start on what tyres. A lot of things can still happen and we’ll see how things play out but I’m aiming for a podium.”

It had been a fairly low-key start to the weekend for Webber on Friday with the “green” track conditions failing to give an indication of everyone’s true pace. McLaren’s Heikki Kovalainen topped the times at the end of the second practice session but yet failed to make it into the top 10 in qualifying today while team-mate and reigning world champion Lewis Hamilton didn’t even make it past the first quali cut. Like RBR, there wasn’t much forthcoming from Brawn GP yesterday, the team going as far as to say they feared they had lost their competitive edge!

However, once everyone got down to the serious business of qualifying, the pecking order had more of a familiar look about it; Brawn, RBR and Ferrari emerging as the leading contenders and Toyota looking to be on a recovery after their disastrous Monaco outing.

Qualifying had a few moments for Webber although he always looked as though he would make it through to the top 10. He was third fastest after his first run in Q1 with a time of 1min 27.678s but slipped to seventh before improving to a 1min 27.466s to regain third for a blink of an eye before dropping to fourth at the flag. As it turned out, his earlier time would have been good enough to have made it into Q2 although it would have been a bit too close for comfort!

Webber posted a “purple” first sector on his initial timed lap in Q2 but having run wide at turn eight aborted his lap and returned to the pits. However, he made no such mistake on his second run, moving to third fastest with a 1min 27.416s before winding up sixth fastest.

A early banker of 1min 29.041s put Webber third fastest in final qualifying but his next timed run proved even quicker, Webber “purple” again in the first sector and going on to take provisional pole with a 1min 28.613s despite collecting a massive bug/insect directly in line of his vision on his visor!  Meanwhile behind him, both Button and Vettel were trading purple sector times, first Button going to the top of the times with a 1min 28.421s only to be replaced by Vettel a few seconds later with a best lap of 1min 28.316s. Webber looked like he might hang onto third but he was demoted to fourth by Barrichello who stole in with a 1min 28.579s.

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