Red Bull's Sebastian Vettel has taken pole position for the Bahrain Grand Prix ahead of Ferrari's Felipe Massa and Fernando Alonso.
Hamilton starts four places ahead of Button; Schumacher seventh
Red Bull driver Sebastian Vettel has taken pole position for the Bahrain Grand Prix.
The 22-year-old lapped the 6.299-kilometre Sakhir circuit in a time of one minute 54.101 seconds to beat Ferrari duo Felipe Massa and Fernando Alonso.
McLaren's Lewis Hamilton lines up fourth on the grid for Sunday's race with his new team-mate, World Champion Jenson Button, starting eighth.
Meanwhile, making his return to Formula One after a three-year absence, Michael Schumacher qualified seventh for Mercedes GP, two places behind team-mate Nico Rosberg.
Vettel's team-mate Mark Webber lines up sixth, while the top 10 places were completed by Renault's Robert Kubica and Force India's Adrian Sutil.
Red Bull ended the 2009 season as the form team and Saturday's qualifying sessions - Vettel also pacing session two - suggests they could well pick up where they left off.
However, Ferrari also appear right in the hunt once more and given rule changes for the 2010 season, Massa and Alonso could be sitting pretty.
A ban on refuelling means that cars will line up carrying about twice the weight of fuel they used to and the word is that Ferrari's F10 is currently performing better than Red Bull's RB6 over longer distances.
Another surprise was the sight of Massa, making his first appearance since suffering a freak accident in Hungary last July, beating his new team-mate to the front row.
Massa's flying lap was 0.141s down on Vettel's best, with double World Champion Alonso 0.366s further back.
Down on pace
Hamilton, meanwhile, set a time 0.455s quicker than Button, with McLaren obviously down on pace compared with Red Bull and Ferrari in qualifying.
The 2008 World Champion said their MP4-25 car lacked downforce in the middle sector of the track although, with outright performance now less of a factor in the race itself given the refuelling ban, he and Button may be able to present a bigger challenge on Sunday.
Even so, Button struggled to get through the second knockout session and needed a late effort to bump Williams driver Rubens Barrichello from 10th place by 0.162s.
The Brazilian therefore lines up 11th and could be in a position to make inroads given another new rule, which enables him to choose the tyres with which he starts the race - unlike the top 10, who must all start on the same tyres they used to set their final qualifying time.
Vitantonio Liuzzi (Force India) qualified 12th ahead of Nico Hulkenberg (Williams), Pedro de la Rosa (Sauber), Sebastien Buemi (Toro Rosso), Kamui Kobayashi (Sauber) and Vitaly Petrov (Renault).
As expected, all the new teams to make the first race of the season failed to progress from the first session - but at least Hispania Racing's Karun Chandhok will start the race.
The Indian rookie had yet to turn a wheel for his new team until Saturday but managed a lap of 2:04.904s in session one - a time albeit over 10 seconds slower than fastest man Alonso.
But predictions that Schumacher is going to need a little time to re-adjust to the rhythm of life in the fast line appear correct so far - the 41-year-old qualifying 0.283s slower than Rosberg.
The question now is whether or not the seven-times World Champion can make use of his experience and tactical nous in the race to claw back that raw pace.
Bahrain Grand Prix, qualifying:
1 Sebastian Vettel (Ger) Red Bull 1min 54.
