Mark Webber continued his red hot form as he drove his Red Bull to pole for the Monaco Grand Prix on Sunday. It was his third pole of the season, his fourth overall and comes on the heel of a dominant weekend at Spain last week, underlying the kind of momentum he has with him now. It was also the sixth pole for Red Bull Racing in six races this year. Robert Kubica was deservedly second for Renault and Webber’s team mate Sebastien Vettel took third (full results).

Red Bull were not expected to be dominant here this weekend but Webber was ahead by three-tenths off Kubica and a further four-tenths ahead of Vettel. Kubica has been quick all weekend and the team has made progress from Barcelona last week when they were not amongst the fastest six cars. Monaco’s unique circuit is of course suiting the Pole who almost made it to, well, the pole position. Vettel meanwhile ran into heavy traffic in Q3 and made it to the second row only on his last hot lap, edging Ferrari’s Felipe Massa into fourth.

The Scuderia will be having mixed feelings tonight. On the one hand they will be happy to see Massa back in form, thanks no less to supersoft tyres in use here. But on the other hand the mechanics will be busy building a new car for Fernando Alonso after he suffered a heavy shunt in third free practice, a couple of hours before qualifying. He will be starting in the pitlane, and hoping for some luck and praying for some rain.

Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button finished fifth and eighth respectively for the McLaren, sandwiching the two Mercedes GP drivers Nico Rosberg and Michael Schumacher between them. All four of them seemed unhappy with the result: Lewis because that was maximum he could draw from the car and it shows how much McLaren have concentrated on the F-duct system rather than getting more downforce; Button because he thought Massa impeded him in Q3; Schumacher was unhappy that his team mate impeded him while Rosberg was disappointed about his final runs in which he ran into traffic. Till then he thought he could challenge for pole and he was indeed quite quick in the first two sessions.

Rubens Barrichello and Vitantonio Liuzzi completed the top ten. The battle for ‘best of the rest’ is now between Williams and Force India as Renault seems to be mixing with the four big teams. Force India will be disappointed that Adrian Sutil couldn’t get into the top ten for he has traditionally done well at Monaco, both in F1 and Formula 3000. However he will be pushing for points in the race as he has the option to start on the hard tyres.

In Q1 the traffic wasn’t really as bad as talked about in the past week. The top teams were all out on track quickly and got in banker laps which meant the new teams were again trying to get in. Heikki Kovalainen in his Lotus was the only one who could have challenged to break into Q2 but he couldn’t. India’s Karun Chandhok couldn’t go quicker than his team mate Bruno Senna in this qualifying event and will start in 23rd position. It has already been established that HRT cars are going slower than GP2 cars at this circuit and so a tough race lies ahead of the duo. As concerns the rest of them, it will be a long race wherein overtaking is usually tough if it stays dry. The start will be important and Webber will not only have to watch out for Kubica but also the fast starting Vettel and Massa. With Alonso expected to try and charge from behind, an intriguing race is anticipated.