Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton finished a tenth clear of Red Bull’s Sebastian Vettel to take pole position for the German grand prix.

Briton Lewis Hamilton has taken his second consecutive pole position and twenty-ninth of his Formula 1 career at the home grand prix for his team, Mercedes.

The biggest casualty of the day was teammate and British grand prix race winner, Nico Rosberg. An initial run in the second part of Saturday’s qualifying appeared to be enough for the German to advance to the top ten shoot-out. However, a late flurry of flying laps in the closing stages of the second session of quali pushed Rosberg down to eleventh and out of contention for the front row of the grid. The German commented that the team had “underestimated the pace of the track.”

Ever dependable Jenson Button managed to drag his McLaren into the top ten and continually impressive Daniel Ricciardo and Sauber’s Nico Hulkenberg advanced to the final part of qualifying.

The gap between the soft and medium compound tyres this weekend has been anything from one to one and a half seconds – a run for pole, or anywhere near the sharp-end would require the yellow marked tyres, no doubt. However, the medium compound tyres have also proven, through long run stints in qualifying, to have a much better wear rate than their softer counterparts. As ever Ferrari chose to play the long run and focus on race day by choosing to run only the medium compound tyres in the final ten minute session of qualifying. The result was seventh for Felipe Massa and eighth for Fernando Alonso. Barring any incidents in the first corners the Ferrari’s should bring themselves nicely in to play in Sunday’s race.

But Saturday once again belonged to Lewis Hamilton. The 2008 champion pipped championship leader Sebastian Vettel to pole position but a tenth of a second. Former German grand prix winner Mark Webber will start third and Kimi Raikkonen, in the Lotus, fourth.

Romain Grosjean and Daniel Ricciardo will start fifth and sixth ahead of Massa, Alonso and Button.