Monza, Italy - Heavy rain on Saturday caused chaos in the qualifying for Sunday's Italian Grand Prix as Sebastian Vettel in a Toro Rosso managed to secure pole position. The German posted a time of 1 minute 37.555 seconds for the 5.793 kilometre-long course, to secure his first-ever pole position and the first pole for his team.
Vettel became the youngest driver in the history of Formula One - at 21 years and 73 days - to win a pole position. His time beat Heikki Kovalainen in a McLaren-Mercedes into second place by 0.306 seconds.
Heavy rains throughout most of the session saw championship leader Lewis Hamilton in a McLaren and the defending world champion Kimi Raikkonnen in a Ferrari being knocked out in the second session, as did Robert Kubica in a BMW-Sauber.
Hamilton will start from 15th, one place behind Raikkonen.
Hamilton's team made a mistake in sending him out on intermediate tyres at the start of the second session, but heavy rain forced him to come in straight away and change to wet tyres, but the increasing rain prevented him from bettering his time.
McLaren team principal Ron Dennis said that the driver took the decision which tyres to use. "But as a team we stand behind the driver and we win as a team and we lose as a team.
"Lewis will have a lot of work to do, but there is still a lot of racing to do, so everything is still open."
When Vettel was told by his race engineers at the end of qualifying that he had secured pole position, he started cheering and screamed "grazie, grazie," to thank his Italian team.
He said at the press conference that he was speechless. "I never would have dreamt that I could be on the pole. This is our home race and even though we are not as big as Ferrari, I think people will now know about us.
"Before the race I was joking with my race engineers that if it rains we should aim for pole, but of course I never really thought that this could happen.
Vettel, who is considered as one of the best drivers in wet conditions, said that he felt really comfortable with the car throughout the session. "I think this is the key. If you have confidence in the car, it shows."
He tried to downplay expectations for Sunday's race. "People should not think now that we will challenge for victory, but we will certainly aim to get as good a position as possible," he said.
The second row on the grid belongs to Red Bull driver Mark Webber and Sebastien Bourdais in the second Toro Rosso, ahead of Nico Rosberg in a Williams and Ferrari's Felipe Massa who will start from the third row.
Toyota's Jarno Trulli and Fernando Alonso had the seventh and eighth-fastest time, while Germans Timo Glock in a Toyota and Nick Heidfeld in a BMW make up the final two places in the top ten.
Ahead of Sunday's race - the 14th of 18 season-races - Hamilton leads the standings with 76 points from Massa, who has two less.
