After topping the times for much of Friday’s second practice session, Mark Webber’s hopes of carrying his pace in today’s official qualifying for the Belgian Grand Prix at Spa Francorchamps were dashed when he was forced to sit out all of this morning’s final practice session through engine failure. This meant the Red Bull Racing driver didn’t turn a wheel in anger until official qualifying.

Webber, who celebrated his 33rd birthday on Thursday, made it through to final qualifying with relative ease but will start tomorrow’s 44-lap race in ninth position, one spot behind team-mate Sebastian Vettel after the Red Bulls failed to come good when it mattered most. The pair’s closest championship rival and Valencia winner Rubens Barrichello appears to be in the box seat again with a handy fourth place on the grid.

However, his Brawn GP team-mate and current championship leader, Jenson Button, is back in the pack in 14thplace after what can only be described as a bizarre qualifying session which ended with Giancarlo Fisichella planting his Force India on pole position ahead of Jarno Trulli and Nick Heidfeld. With Barrichello in fourth, the first two rows are filled with F1 veterans!

“Yesterday went very, very well for us and we seemed to be very competitive in the second session after the first one was washed out by rain. We got some good running under our belt and I came to the track this morning feeling very positive and optimistic we could do very well today,” he said. “I had a problem with one of the coils on my race engine when I went out for my first run in final practice; we changed the engine as a precaution and so I wasn’t able to do any running in P3. We went straight into qualifying and preparing ourselves for Q3 to try and have a shot at the front row. As it turned out, it wasn’t a session that went in our favour in terms of pace. Sebastian and I struggled to do competitive times and unfortunately that’s the way it went today.”