Red Bull's Sebastian Vettel took pole for the
Singapore Grand Prix after some self-imposed
anxious moments as his rivals came close to his
time.
Vettel has dominated all weekend under the lights of
the demanding Marina Bay circuit at Formula 1's night
race, but sat out the final minutes of the session.
He thought he had done enough after a fast early run
and watched as Mercedes' Nico Rosberg closed to
within 0.091secs.
"It was very close and it's not the best feeling when
you stand there and watch," Vettel said.
Vettel's title rival Fernando Alonso could manage only
seventh in his Ferrari.
Lotus's Romain Grosjean took third, ahead of Red Bull's
Mark Webber and Mercedes driver Lewis Hamilton.
Grosjean's team-mate Kimi Raikkonen was knocked out
in the second part of qualifying and will start 13th.
The Finn had to have a pain-killing injection in his lower
back before qualifying after suffering pain from a
muscle problem and was 0.701secs slower than
Grosjean in the second part of qualifying.
"This morning I couldn't really try," said Raikkonen. "So
we probably didn't get done what we wanted with the
car but at least we got the car on the grid and we'll see
what we can do tomorrow."
Vettel had looked set to take a crushing pole position by
a significant margin after setting a time in the early part
of the top 10 shoot-out which was 0.59secs quicker
than Rosberg.
But although he told his team he felt he could improve
by "a tenth or two" he was asked by engineer
Guillaume Roquelin if he was happy not to run again
and he said he was.
As his rivals began their runs on new 'super-soft' tyres
at the end of the session, it became clear that it was
going to be much closer than Vettel had thought.
Webber was matching his team-mate's time after two-
thirds of the lap, only to lose 0.3secs in the final sector.
Grosjean set the fastest middle sector of all but could
not quite match Vettel in the final sector, and Rosberg
was close throughout his lap.
Mercedes team boss Ross Brawn told Rosberg over the
radio: "He didn't run and I would think he was
watching your lap getting somewhat anxious."
"I was watching the sector times closely," added Vettel.
"Mark set a purple [fastest of all] sector one, Romain
set a purple sector two, then Nico set a purple sector
two, but fortunately my last sector was strong enough."
Ferrari have struggled with a lack of grip all weekend
and Alonso ended up being out-qualified by team-mate
Felipe Massa for the second consecutive race, despite
being considerably faster throughout the weekend until
the final qualifying runs.
Massa has a point to prove following Ferrari's decision
to drop him at the end of the year in favour of
Raikkonen.
The top 10 was completed by McLaren's Jenson Button
in eighth, Toro Rosso's Daniel Ricciardo and Sauber's
Esteban Gutierrez.
Force India's Paul Di Resta was knocked out in the first
part of qualifying for the fourth time in the last eight
races and will line up 17th.
The Scot was 0.161secs slower than team-mate Adrian
Sutil, who managed to scrape through in 15th place as
the team continue to struggle on the new-specification
tyre that was introduced at the Hungarian Grand Prix
four races ago.
"We're too slow on one lap," Di Resta said. "I've
struggled a bit more than Adrian over one lap but I'm
much stronger on a long run, so perhaps we've
concentrated on that too much.
"But we've become vulnerable in Q1 and that's not
good."
There was an impressive performance from Englishman
Max Chilton, who was just 0.1secs behind Marussia
team-mate Jules Bianchi as he continues to adapt to F1
in his rookie season.
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