Vettel had the last word in the rain at Sepang

Sebastian Vettel signed his second pole in a row at Sepang by setting the best time in the last qualifying session contested in the rain. The three-time world champion had the right strategy by passing through the pits to put on a new set of intermediate tires. The pilot Red Bull finally ahead of Felipe Massa by nine tenths who will start alongside him on the first row of the starting grid. However, the German was in difficulty at the start of the session. “This qualifying session was quite interesting. The first part was pretty poor for me after we waited for the rain to start the session. I barely had time to set a time to move on to Q3. »

The reigning world champion nevertheless took advantage of the changing conditions in the latter part of qualifying to get the most out of the RB9. “I was convinced that I had to change tires for the last session as the track started to dry. I was surprised by my lead over the other drivers. My lap was not easy because the track was very tricky with the conditions. The race will be long tomorrow and we will have to maintain our speed. We confirmed that our car was fast. We will have to save our tires for the start of the race in order to try to finish the race in the same position but we were able to save our tires for tomorrow with the help of the weather. »