Red Bull no-show as Alonso takes shock Singapore pole

Fernando Alonso snatched a surprise pole position under the lights of Singapore ahead of tomorrow night's race, after beat favourite Sebastian Vettel in an intense qualifying battle. With less than a tenth of a second of an advantage, Alonso secured his second consecutive pole position as he looked to further enhance his championship chances, while Vettel had to make do with second despite dominating in practice yesterday and today.

After easily make it through the cut into Q3, Alonso's first laptime was a 1m45.390s, making it the quickest ever laptime around the Singapore street circuit. Having lost his first lap due to slower traffic, Vettel had one final opportunity to match the Spaniard's time but was unable to get close enough to his monstrous effort, eventually crossing the line in a 1m45.457s, securing him his first front row grid position since the Hungarian Grand Prix almost two months' ago.

Taking third was McLaren's Lewis Hamilton who extracted the maximum from his MP4-25 to post a time of 1m45.571s, almost four tenths quicker than team-mate Jenson Button (1m45.944s). The big loser from the session was Mark Webber in the second Red Bull after posting a time of just 1m45.977s having failed to get properly dialed into the circuit. He starts fifth.