Sebastian Vettel snatched his first pole of 2012 in Bahrain

Sebastian Vettel has returned to form as he snatched pole position in Bahrain GP qualifying session today. This is his first pole of the 2012 season after being comprehensively outperformed by the Mercedes GP and McLaren team this season. Team mate, Mark Webber completed the top three, while these RBR drivers sandwiching the Lewis Hamilton in McLaren team.

The top-of-the-form Mercedes AMG PETRONAS team however has faded into the Bahrain dust this time around, with Nico Rosberg settling in 5th, some four tenth slower than the pole sitter, and team mate Michael Schumacher was down in 18th, behind the struggling Caterham piloted by Heikki Kovalainen. The former F1 legend was said to be angry at the mistake of not sending his out in soft tyres towards the end of Q1.

Fernando Alonso however managed to scrape into the Q3, the effort which team mate Felipe Massa clearly ran out talent to repeat so. Hence the leading Ferrari will start on 9th, while the backmarker-alike second car will start from 14th place.

Much has been talked about the safety of conducting the F1 race is the unstable country like Bahrain. Thankfully, apart from some unhurt Force India personnel who was caught in the primitive road mishap, the rest are doing fine. It is a pity that this kind of scenario is being caught in F1 scene. 

Full Bahrain GP qualifying results can be found after the jump. 

Pos  Driver                Team                   Time              
 1.  Sebastian Vettel      Red Bull-Renault       1m32.422s  
 2.  Lewis Hamilton        McLaren-Mercedes       +  0.098
 3.  Mark Webber           Red Bull-Renault       +  0.215
 4.  Jenson Button         McLaren-Mercedes       +  0.289
 5.  Nico Rosberg          Mercedes               +  0.399
 6.  Daniel Ricciardo      Toro Rosso-Ferrari     +  0.490
 7.  Romain Grosjean       Lotus-Renault          +  0.586
 8.  Sergio Perez          Sauber-Ferrari         +  0.972
 9.  Fernando Alonso       Ferrari                No time
10.  Paul di Resta         Force India-Mercedes   No time
11.  Kimi Raikkonen        Lotus-Renault          
12.  Kamui Kobayashi       Sauber-Ferrari         
13.  Nico Hulkenberg       Force India-Mercedes   
14.  Felipe Massa          Ferrari                
15.  Bruno Senna           Williams-Renault       
16.  Heikki Kovalainen     Caterham-Renault       
17.  Michael Schumacher    Mercedes               
18.  Jean-Eric Vergne      Toro Rosso-Ferrari     
19.  Vitaly Petrov         Caterham-Renault       
20.  Charles Pic           Marussia-Cosworth      
21.  Pedro de la Rosa      HRT-Cosworth           
22.  Pastor Maldonado      Williams-Renault       
23.  Timo Glock            Marussia-Cosworth      
24.  Narain Karthikeyan    HRT-Cosworth