The pole, Vettel's 47th, ended a run of 18 in a row for world champions Mercedes who had Valtteri Bottas and Lewis Hamilton right behind the two red cars in third and fourth places.
Finland's Valtteri Bottas kept champions Mercedes on pole position for the Austrian Grand Prix on Saturday after title-chasing team mate Lewis Hamilton was hit with a five-place grid penalty.
Sebastian Vettel has made clear his future is with Ferrari as Mercedes look to replace newly-retired Formula One world champion Nico Rosberg for next season.
McLaren's attempt to reinstate Lewis Hamilton as Belgian Grand Prix winner will be heard by Formula One's court of appeal in Paris on September 22, the governing FIA said on Friday. Championship leader Hamilton was stripped of victory after race stewards at Spa ruled he had gained an advantage from cutting a chicane while challenging Ferrari's Kimi Raikkonen for the lead.
Kimi Raikkonen led a Ferrari one-two in Malaysian Grand Prix practice on Friday with the world champions back up to speed after a difficult start to the season. Raikkonen, the 2007 world champion who won at Sepang last year, fired in a quickest lap of one minute 35.707 seconds in the afternoon to end Nico Rosberg's four-session run at the top of the timesheets. Brazilian team mate Felipe Massa was second quickest in 1:35.832.
In a thrilling race with two safety car periods, reigning champion Hamilton went from pole position to the rear of the field before finishing second for Mercedes in a superb fightback. Ferrari's Kimi Raikkonen was third.
Kimi Raikkonen's Ferrari had to stay in the pits for over three hours on Tuesday because of a problem with the Kinetic Energy Recovery System (KERS) during testing in Bahrain.
Formula One world champion Lewis Hamilton took pole position for the French Grand Prix on Saturday with Mercedes team mate Valtteri Bottas alongside him on the front row.
Ferrari's Kimi Raikkonen will join the Mercedes driver on the front row, with championship-leading teammate Sebastian Vettel qualifying third.
Formula One championship leader Lewis Hamilton clinched a record-extending 92nd career pole position in a Mercedes front-row lockout with team mate Valtteri Bottas at the Spanish Grand Prix on Saturday.
Newly-crowned four-times world champion Sebastian Vettel showed no signs of easing up as he led a Red Bull one-two in free practice for the Abu Dhabi Formula One Grand Prix.
Formula One championship leader Lewis Hamilton put McLaren on pole position for engine partners Mercedes' home German Grand Prix/
Switching to hard tyre helped Giancarlo Fisichella overcome a wobbly start and the Force India driver benefitted from Rubens Barichello's drive-through penalty to gain five places and finish 12th in the Malaysian Grand Prix in Sepang on Sunday.
Felipe Massa and Kimi Raikkonen topped the timesheets in first free practice at the Malaysian Grand Prix on Friday, restoring pride for Ferrari fans after a turbulent week. Massa ended the opening practice session at Sepang with the fastest time of 1:35.392, followed by world champion Raikkonen 1.067 seconds behind.
The Ferrari driver ruled out doing anything differently this year despite being beaten to the title by team mate Kimi Raikkonen last season.
Ferrari's Felipe Massa took pole position at the Turkish Grand Prix for the third year in a row on Saturday. Brazilian Massa, who has won at the Istanbul Park circuit for the past two years, will have McLaren's Heikki Kovalainen alongside him on the front row in Sunday's race.
Brazilian Felipe Massa led Ferrari to a one-two victory at the Bahrain Grand Prix on Sunday with team mate Kimi Raikkonen seizing the championship lead from McLaren's Lewis Hamilton. Massa's sixth career win brought him his first points of the Formula One season and came at the same Sakhir desert circuit where he fired up his title challenge last year with a pole-to-flag victory.
Lewis Hamilton has competed with Alonso, Raikkonen, Button, Rosberg, Schumacher and Vettel, champions all of them, and he has come out on top.
Formula One leader Lewis Hamilton ousted Mercedes team mate Nico Rosberg from the top of the timesheets in Italian Grand Prix free practice on Friday. The Briton, chasing his 50th grand prix win on Sunday, enjoyed a sunny afternoon at the Monza circuit with a fastest lap of one minute 22.801 seconds on the supersoft tyres after being second to Rosberg in the morning. Rosberg quickest effort then was a 1:22.959, with the German lapping in 1:22.994 after lunch.
For the first time in F1 history, two four-time champions are on the same grid and vying for their fifth title.
The 39-year-old German will test Ferrari's 2008 car in Spain next week along with reigning F1 champion Kimi Raikkonen.
McLaren's Lewis Hamilton will drop 10 places on the French Grand Prix starting grid after a pit lane collision with Ferrari's Kimi Raikkonen in Canada on Sunday. Race stewards imposed the penalty after both drivers were forced to retire from a race that was eventually won by BMW Sauber's Robert Kubica.
Force India owner Vijay Mallya looks back on the Monaco Grand Prix, which saw his team's hopes of picking its first points shattered when Adrian Sutil was bumped out by Kimi Raikkonen.
Formula One is feeling a fresh wave of optimism under its new owners, while Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso are the two most popular drivers, according to an extensive fan survey released on Friday.
Charles Leclerc seized the first pole position of his Formula One career on Saturday with Ferrari team mate Sebastian Vettel second fastest to lock out the front row for the Bahrain Grand Prix.
Formula One will be badly damaged if 'grubby' legal manoeuvring leads to Kimi Raikkonen losing his title to McLaren's Lewis Hamilton in a courtroom, Ferrari's lawyer said.
Formula One's 'silly season' of rumour and speculation is heating up.
Five-times Formula One world champion Lewis Hamilton led a Mercedes front-row lockout with a blistering pole position at the season-ending Abu Dhabi Grand Prix on Saturday.
The Mercedes driver's 55th career win was hard-fought and tense, however, with Ferrari's Vettel seizing the lead at the start and in the hunt all the way to the finish as the tyre strategies played out.
The Brazilian lapped a three hundredths of a second quicker than Fernando Alonso in the dying seconds of the final qualifying session.
Lewis Hamilton joined Massa on the front row, with Ferrari's Kimi Raikkonen lining up third.
Finn Kimi Raikkonen reported back to work as Formula One world champion on Tuesday.
British rookie Lewis Hamilton finished second in the Malaysian GP to hand McLaren their first one-two since 2005.
"Over there people don't come up to you, they leave you alone and give you space," the 22-year-old McLaren driver, who finished one point behind Ferrari's Kimi Raikkonen in a remarkable debut season, told the BBC.
Ferrari dominated French Grand Prix free practice on Friday with Felipe Massa and Kimi Raikkonen reviving the Italian team's hopes of ending McLaren's winning streak.
It was a remarkable comeback by Ferrari's Kimi Raikkonen, who had trailed Lewis Hamilton by 17 points with two races to go.
'The phenomenal Max Verstappen was both sloppy and superb in Germany, getting caught out during the first two starts, and even spinning his car around to give the crowd something to gasp at with a Batmobile-esque 360 degree turn. 'After Hamilton crashed and Verstappen sniffed victory, though, he pounced hard, put his foot down, and took a deserved race win,' says Rediff's F1 columnist Raja Sen.
Ferrari's Felipe Massa and Kimi Raikkonen made a flying start to the Formula One season on Friday with the fastest times in free practice for the Australian Grand Prix.
Quadruple world champion Sebastian Vettel will replace Fernando Alonso at Ferrari next season after signing a three-year deal, the Italian team said on Thursday.
The Brazilian now looks much more like the real deal, no longer simply plugging a hole at Ferrari until someone better comes along.
