By Ian Lockwood
August 24 2013

Sebastian Vettel will start from the front row in Belgium tomorrow, with Mark Webber lining up third as the Infiniti Red Bull Racing pair were pipped for pole in the dying seconds of qualifying at Spa-Francorchamps by Lewis Hamilton.

With the weather changing by the minute in Q3, the front-of-grid slot could have gone to any of a number of drivers.

At the beginning of the final qualifying segment most drivers exited pit lane on slick tyres. Within seconds, however, the drizzle worsened and most of the competing cars dived back to the pits for a swap to intermediate tyres.

The main exception was Force India’s Paul Di Resta, who had started in intermediates. He posted the first timed lap of the session and when the next lap completed was some three seconds off the Scot’s time it looked like he was in with a shout of repeating Giancarlo Fisichella’s 2009 feat of grabbing Force India a Belgian pole.

Suddenly though, the rain began to lessen and the track started to dry quickly. Nico Rosberg flashed across the line and Di Resta was consigned to P2. With the track conditions still wildly unpredictable, Rosberg might have felt he had a good chance of taking his fourth pole of the season.

Three drivers were still circulating, however. Seb, Mark and Hamilton had made it across the line with just before the chequered flag came out and had another opportunity.

Mark made the first move, jumping into P1 with his best lap. He didn’t even get time to consider his chances of hanging on to the place, however.

Within seconds he was pushed out to P2 by Seb’s lap, which was just over a tenth better. Hamilton, though, was closing fast and when the Mercedes driver crossed the line his time was just under two tenths better than Seb’s. The champion had been denied by the Briton for the third race in a row.

Despite missing out, Sebastian was pleased with his second career front-row start in Belgium.

“I’m happy today; the boys did a good job with the change from slicks to intermediates which got us an extra lap and it was a good day for the team,” he said of his and Mark’s grid positions.

“It wasn’t clear if the first lap we did in Q3 was the lap on intermediate tyres – so it was hard to know where we were,” he added. “We went out on slicks to start, which was quite entertaining as it started to rain pretty heavily. We then went onto intermediates and it still wasn’t clear what would happen. It looked like there was more rain coming, so we all rushed to get a lap, but then it stopped and the circuit came back very quickly.

“The last lap tuned out to be the fastest with the circuit drying. It was difficult to know how fast you could go, I saw Lewis catching and thought I could have gone a bit quicker here and there, but in the end it was quite close across the line. In these conditions anything can happen.”

Mark agreed to that it had been a tricky session, with the weather meaning correct pit wall decisions were crucial.“It was a difficult session to make all the right calls, but in the end I think we got most things right,” he said. “I think it’s very easy to look stupid in those conditions, but in the end we did most things pretty good I’d say.

“For me, it was a ballsy thing to go slower on the second to last lap to save the tyres, when you’re still not sure if the track will improve for the last lap, but in the end it worked out and I’m happy to be up there for tomorrow’s race.”

Team Principal Christian Horner, meanwhile, saluted the pit crew for getting both cars out on the right tyres at the right time.

“The boys did a tremendous job on the final turnaround in Q3 to get both cars back out on track so quickly, which enabled Mark and Sebastian to get three timed laps each,” he said. “So, despite the opportunity to get everything wrong today, we managed to get most of it right. It’s good to be starting second and third for tomorrow’s race, which will no doubt see the weather play a part.”

The Infiniti Red Bull Racing pair will start ahead of Rosberg, with Di Resta fifth and Jenson Button sixth.

Row four will see Romain Grosjean line up in seventh ahead of team-mate Kimi Raikkonen while the top 10 line-up will be completed by the Ferrari duo of Fernando Alonso and Felipe Massa.

The weather also played its part in the opening phase of the one-hour session, where, in wet conditions the big winners were Caterham’s Giedo van der Garde (14th) and Marussia’s Jules Bianchi (15th) and Max Chilton (16th), who all grabbed career-best grid slots. The big losers were the Toro Rosso pairing of Jean-Eric Vergne and Daniel Ricciardo who misjudged the conditions with the result that they were eliminated in Q1. They will line up 18th and 19th respectively tomorrow.