Vettel claims 22nd career pole

Sebastian Vettel again destroyed the field in qualifying ahead of the European Grand Prix as he clinched his seventh pole in eight races this season.

It is the 22nd pole of Vettel's career, and the ninth in a row for Red Bull stretching back to the end of last season.

Vettel posted a time of one minute 36.975 seconds, finishing 0.188secs ahead of Red Bull team-mate Mark Webber, who pipped Lewis Hamilton in his McLaren late on, leaving the Briton to start third.

Despite teams being forced to run the same engine mapping - without using tweaks to enhance performance - for qualifying as in the race, that mattered little to Red Bull.

Behind the leading trio will be Ferrari duo Fernando Alonso and Felipe Massa in fourth and fifth, with Jenson Button sixth in his McLaren, finishing almost 0.7secs behind Vettel.

Nico Rosberg and Michael Schumacher line up seventh and eighth for Mercedes, with Renault's Nick Heidfeld ninth and Adrian Sutil 10th for Force India.

There were few surprises in a disrupted 15-minute second session in which Pastor Maldonado caused a red flag after his Williams ground to a halt on track. The Venezuelan, who starts 15th, appeared to suffer an engine issue prior to stopping and bizarrely then parked his car in the middle of the circuit.

A four-minute delay followed whilst his car was retrieved, at which stage there were eight minutes of action remaining in Q2. The top six drivers at that point in Vettel, Hamilton, Button, Alonso, Webber and Rosberg opted not to venture back out, knowing they had done enough.

In the closing stages Sutil dropped Vitaly Petrov down to 11th by a mere 0.034secs, with the Russian lining up in 11th ahead of Paul di Resta who finished 0.388secs behind his Force India team-mate.

Williams' Rubens Barrichello starts 13th, Sauber's Kamui Kobayashi 14th ahead of Maldonado, with the second Sauber of Sergio Perez occupying 16th on the grid, and Toro Rosso's Sebastien Buemi 17th.