The 22-year-old clocked a best lap of one minute and 34.558 seconds in the final seconds to outpace his nearest rival and Red Bull team-mate Mark Webber.

It was wunderkind Vettel's third pole in four races this year and the eighth pole of his career as the Red Bull team delivered their third successive front row lockout and fourth straight pole.

Webber had snatched the fastest lap time with barely a minute remaining when, in a final flurry of activity, both McLaren drivers made bids to take pole but failed before Vettel recorded his flawless final lap.

This left the Red Bulls on the front row ahead of two-times world champion Fernando Alonso for Ferrari and Nico Rosberg in the leading Mercedes.

Defending world champion Jenson Button and his McLaren team-mate Lewis Hamilton, the 2008 champion qualified in fifth and sixth positions.

Felipe Massa was seventh in the second Ferrari, Robert Kubica eighth for Renault, Michael Schumacher ninth for Mercedes and Adrian Sutil 10th for Force India.

The first mini-session, Q1, was led initially by Alonso before Hamilton topped the times.

He was quickest ahead of Rosberg, Webber and Alonso while there was a surprise at the other end of the time-sheets with the early elimination of Vitantonio Liuzzi of Force India.

His team-mate Adrian Sutil sailed through to Q2 with some ease, a fact that heaps pressure on the Italian's performances.

Also out went Timo Glock of Virgin, the two Lotus men Jarno Trulli and Heikki Kovalainen, Lucas Di Grassi in the second Virgin and Bruno Senna and his Hispania team-mate Karun Chandhok.

Hamilton, fastest in Friday practice, but outpaced on Saturday morning by Webber, was soon showing his pace again in Q2 with an early fastest lap of 1:34.928 on soft tyres.

He stayed there with Webber second ahead of Rosberg and with Schumacher squeezing through to the pole position shootout in 10th place.

This session saw the knockout blow delivered to Rubens Barrichello of Williams, Jaime Alguersuari of Toro Rosso and his brave team-mate Sebastien Buemi, recovered from his huge accident on Friday.

Vitaly Petrov of Renault, Kamui Kobayashi of Sauber, Nico Hulkenberg in the second Williams and Pedro de la Rosa in the second Sauber were also eliminated.

Earlier in Saturday's practice Mark Webber clocked his session-best lap of 1min 35.323secs with two minutes remaining in the hour-long session, extending his margin over the rest of the field after he took top spot with six minutes to go.