Vettel, however, will move up to fifth tomorrow as Kimi Raikkonen will drop
five places to 10th after the gearbox in his Lotus was changed overnight.
Team-mate Romain Grosjean now starts sixth, with Mercedes’ Nico Rosberg
seventh and Fernando Alonso in his Ferrari eighth, with Sauber’s Sergio
Perez ninth.
Williams’ Pastor Maldonado starts 11th ahead of Felipe Massa who, for the
second successive race, missed out on a place in the top 10, this time by a
quarter of a second.
Bruno Senna lines up 13th in his Williams, followed by Paul di Resta for Force
India, the Scot just 13 thousandths of a second ahead of team-mate Nico
Hulkenberg in 16th.
Toro Rosso’s Daniel Ricciardo finds himself sandwiched between the Force India
pair in 15th, with Sauber’s Kamui Kobayashi down in 17th and comprehensively
thrashed by team-mate Perez.
After qualifying a superb 11th on his debut for Toro Rosso a week ago in
Australia, it was back down to earth with a bump for Jean- Eric Vergne.
On this occasion the Frenchman failed to make it out of Q1 and will start
18th, finishing a considerable distance of almost 0.6secs off a spot in the
second session.
Although Heikki Kovalainen qualified 19th, the Finn will drop to the back of
the grid courtesy of a five-place penalty.
That was imposed after last Sunday’s race at Melbourne’s Albert Park for
overtaking Vettel during the safety car period.
Caterham team-mate Vitaly Petrov will now occupy 19th, followed by the
Marussia duo of Timo Glock and Charles Pic.
After failing to qualify last week, HRT pair Pedro de la Rosa and Narain
Karthikeyan both fell within the 107% rule – the latter by 0.391secs – and
so will start tomorrow’s race.