Webber takes Spa pole in thrilling qualifying

World championship leader Mark Webber will start tomorrow afternoon's Belgian Grand Prix from pole position after a frenetic qualifying session in the Ardennes on Saturday. Despite the team having concerns about the pace of chief rivals McLaren and Ferrari, Webber posted the quickest time of the deciding Q3 session to take his sixth career pole position, beating 2008 world champion Lewis Hamilton and Renault's Robert Kubica to the honours.

After a brief red flag period to clear up Vitaly Petrov's Renault from the grass verge on the exit of turn 9, the rain soon decended on Spa-Francorchamps in Q1, sending drivers spinning in all directions at the Stavelot turn. While many drivers managed to complete their laps on slick tyres, many went quicker when returning to the track with intermediates. Jarno Trulli, Kamui Kobayashi, Bruno Senna, Sakon Yamamoto, Pedro de la Rosa, Lucas Di Grassi and Vitaly Petrov all failed to progress.