German Grand Prix - Mark Webber Takes First F1 Career Pole

Aussie Mark Webber took his first F1 career pole position at a rain affected qualifying session at the Nurburgring yesterday afternoon with a blistering lap in difficult conditions.

It transpires that this pole position was fully merited as his car is fueled heavier than his nearest rivals on the grid.

Rubens Barrichello made a good tactical choice of tyre and was able to take second slot on the grid behind Webber but in front of his team mate and Championship leader Jenson Button in third.

At the press conference, Webber (obviously) and Barrichello seemed very pleased with their performance whilst Button's body language told a different story. It doesn't look like he will have an easy ride during the race today.

The Red Bulls appear to have the edge over the Brawns this weekend. On top of that, with more changeable weather forecast for the race, Barrichello and Vettel are ones to watch out for.

Talking of Vettel, he qualified fourth to the disappointment of the German crowd, but when fuel load is taken into account he would have been only 0.25 seconds behind Webber in P2.

The McLaren team appear to have pulled out all the stops to make some major improvements to their performance this weekend. New aero parts have been fitted to Lewis Hamilton's car giving around 0.7 seconds per lap improvement.

Hamilton qualified fifth and could be on for a podium finish especially if the weather comes into play. Heikki Kovalainen qualified sixth despite the new parts only being fitted to Hamilton's car but will probably drop back during the race.

The other star of qualifying (apart from Mark Webber) was Adrian Sutil who guided his Force India into P7. The highest ever qualifying slot for the team. Again the position was fully merited when fuel adjusted. Could Force India be on for their first points of the season?

The two Ferraris of Massa and Rakkonen qualified eighth and ninth respectively whilst Nelson Piquet rounded out the top ten outqualifying his team mate Alonso.

Hopefully Webber and Barrichello can both outscore their respective team mates this weekend to add some well needed spice to this season's Championship.

All will be revealed later today.