Lewis Hamilton will start Mercedes’ home Grand Prix in pole position after he stole the front-row grid slot from Sebastian Vettel in the closing seconds of the session.
Home favourite Vettel starts second with a lap one tenth slower despite looking dominant throughout practice for the German GP.
The second Red Bull of Mark Webber starts third ahead of the Lotus duo of Kimi Raikkonen and Romain Grosjean.
Daniel Ricciardo hasn’t done his chances of taking Webber’s seat at Red Bull any harm with a brilliant performance on Saturday which sees him start sixth, meanwhile team-mate Jean-Eric Vergne could only manage 16th.
The surprise of the session was Ferrari’s admission that they had no chance of taking pole, so opted to instead cruise around on the medium tyre. Felipe Massa starts 7th with Fernando Alonso 8th.
Ninth went to Jenson Button and tenth to Nico Hulkenberg, both of whom failed to set a timed lap.
The second Mercedes of Nico Rosberg was the surprise loss in Q2 after his team believed they were comfortably through. Sadly for the German, that wasn’t the case and starts 11th.
Further back and Force India struggled with the new tyres and start 12th and 15th respectively for Paul di Resta and Adrian Sutil who was outqualified by a team-mate for the first time at his home race.
Qualifying – 2013 German Grand Prix
| # | Driver | Team | Q1 | Q2 | Q3 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 02 | S. Vettel | Red Bull | 1:31.269 | 1:29.992 | 1:29.501 |
| 03 | M. Webber | Red Bull | 1:31.428 | 1:30.217 | 1:29.608 |
| 09 | J. Button | McLaren | 1:31.181 | 1:30.269 | |
| 13 | S. Perez | McLaren | 1:31.498 | 1:30.933 | |
| 05 | R. Grosjean | Lotus | 1:31.242 | 1:30.005 | 1:29.959 |
| 11 | N. Rosberg | Mercedes | 1:31.322 | 1:30.326 | |
| 08 | F. Alonso | Ferrari | 1:30.709 | 1:29.962 | 1:31.209 |
| 04 | K. Räikkönen | Lotus | 1:30.676 | 1:29.852 | 1:29.892 |
| 01 | L. Hamilton | Mercedes | 1:31.131 | 1:30.152 | 1:29.398 |
| 10 | N. Hulkenberg | Sauber | 1:31.132 | 1:30.231 | |
| 07 | F. Massa | Ferrari | 1:30.547 | 1:29.825 | 1.31.126 |
| 12 | P. di Resta | Force India | 1:31.322 | 1:30.697 | |
| 14 | A. Sutil | Force India | 1:31.320 | 1:31.010 | |
| 17 | V. Bottas | Williams | 1:31.693 | ||
| 15 | J-E. Vergne | Toro Rosso | 1:31.629 | 1:31.104 | |
| 06 | D. Ricciardo | Toro Rosso | 1:31.081 | 1:30.223 | 1:30.528 |
| 18 | P. Maldonado | Williams | 1:31.707 | ||
| 16 | E. Gutierrez | Sauber | 1:31.681 | ||
| 20 | J. Bianchi | Marussia | 1:33.063 | ||
| 22 | M. Chilton | Marussia | 1:34.098 | ||
| 21 | G. van der Garde | Caterham | 1:33.734 | ||
| 19 | C. Pic | Caterham | 1:32.937 |
