2009 British Grand Prix: Vettel Plays an Ace in Qualifying

Sebastien Vettel has taken his fourth career pole in front of a packed Silverstone crowd as Formula One returns to racing.

With the political intricacies that have been surrounding Formula One over the past couple of weeks, it's been difficult to focus on the core of the sport, but qualifying has come as a welcome reprieve.

Red Bull have looked the strongest of the field since the the weekend started and this afternoon's qualifying session has done nothing to suggest otherwise, with the lead car of Vettel on pole with Mark Webber in third.

The pole time of 1m19.509 was comfortably quicker than Silverstone expert Rubens Barrichello, who followed the young German on the grid in second to split the Red Bull pair.

Jenson Button suffered his worst qualifying of the season in front of his home fans, and ended a disappointing sixth. Although the result isn't all that much of a surprise after watching the championship leader struggle for the majority of the weekend.

"I just felt like I was skating around, its almost a completely different car to Turkey"

Jarno Trulli and a very impressive Kajuki Nakijima line up fourth and fifth respectively.

Fellow Brit and reigning World Champion Lewis Hamilton was a disastrous 19th after Adrian Sutil crashed heavily into Abbey, bringing out the red flag.

"I gave it my all but there's not a lot more I could have got from it"

The crash itself was one of the season's biggest, although the cause is still unclear. The Force India ran across the gravel and into the barrier at around 150 mph.