Vettel blows away rivals

The German's mark was just three-thousandths slower than Lewis Hamilton's quickest in taking pole for the race a year ago - set during Q2.

Vettel remained in the garage for the opening 20 minutes as the rest of the field scrambled to make use of the dry conditions, despite there being no threat of rain.

When he did emerge he took only five minutes to post a timesheet-leading lap-time, before immediately knocking seven-tenths off it.

Jenson Button bettered it briefly around the halfway point of the 90-minute session, setting 1:47.690, while Ferrari's Fernando Alonso went P2 soon afterwards.

But German Vettel responded with 1:47.168 before again trimming time off with his following lap (1:46.974).

Before coming into the pits he lowered the bar to his ultimate best with 35 minutes remaining in the session.

With the final half hour or so spent running with heavy fuel and testing out the durability of the super-soft tyres, there were few improvements in lap-times.

In the sister Red Bull RB6 Mark Webber went P2 before moving to within six-tenths of Vettel, where he finished, with Button finally third over a second off the pace in his McLaren.

Alonso was fourth followed by Button's team-mate Lewis Hamilton and Felipe Massa as Red Bull, Ferrari and McLaren closed out the top six places.

With Webber leading the standings from Hamilton, and Alonso, Button and Vettel still in with a shout of the title, the final five races will be closely contested. On this form, Vettel could easily make up the gap to his team-mate.

The top 10 was rounded out by Rubens Barrichello, Felipe Massa, Nico Rosberg, Robert Kubica and Michael Schumacher, who was second in the morning.

There were a few scrapes with the wall, most notably by the Toro Rosso drivers, but the only major incidents involved Alonso and Adrian Sutil.

Sutil missed the apex of the first corner of the turn 10/11 complex and his Force India took off on the second kerb, crashing down to break his front left suspension.

Later Alonso, having set a fastest first sector time but dropping to 0.1s off Vettel's benchmark time by the end of sector two, clipped a kerb and had to leave the track. When he reversed back on to it, he stalled - and had to abandon the F10 while marshals wheeled it to a safe place.