Red Bull duo lead the way

Red Bull Racing shrugged off the technical row that has so far cast a shadow over the British Grand Prix weekend by locking out the front row of the Silverstone grid.

But, for only the second time in nine races this season, Sebastian Vettel is not on pole as team-mate Mark Webber will instead lead away the field.

A light shower in the closing couple of minutes scuppered all hope of anybody dislodging the mighty Red Bull pairing from their lofty perch, although in truth it is unlikely they would have been headed anyway.

With reigning champion and runaway leader Vettel lining up second, it means he has now qualified on the front row for the last 14 races, just 10 behind the record set by Ayrton Senna over the 1988 and 1989 seasons.

The furore surrounding the ban on off-throttle blown diffusers had an impact, but not in the way many had thought in light of the row that developed on Friday between Red Bull team principal Christian Horner and McLaren counterpart Martin Whitmarsh.

Red Bull were forced to back down following an extraordinary meeting of the Technical Working Group prior to qualifying, but in essence there appeared to be little change as Webber set a lap of one minute 30.399secs, just 0.032secs ahead of Vettel.

Behind the Red Bull pair were Ferrari's Fernando Alonso and team-mate Felipe Massa, the Spaniard maintaining his record of out-qualifying the Brazilian at every race this season.

McLaren's Jenson Button starts fifth, finishing narrowly ahead of Paul di Resta in sixth, who produced a brilliant performance for his best showing in his debut campaign with Force India.

Williams' Pastor Maldonado also registered a career high in seventh, with Sauber's Kamui Kobayashi eighth and the Mercedes of Nico Rosberg in ninth.

As for Lewis Hamilton, he will start 10th, his worst grid position since last year's Malaysian Grand Prix, his car clearly affected by the regulation change.