Lewis Hamilton takes pole

Lewis Hamilton will start the Singapore Grand Prix from pole position. He qualified more than half a second ahead of second-place Pastor Maldonado, to take his fifth pole position of the season and his second at this track.

Reigning world champion Sebastian Vettel had been fastest in all three practice sessions, but could only manage third. 

Jenson Button will start the race from 4th, while championship leader Fernando Alonso is in fifth, ahead of Paul di Resta and Mark Webber.

Despite brushing the wall in Q2 and going sideways in Q3, Romain Grosjean finished the session 8th fastest - an impressive performance from the Frenchman, following his one-race ban for causing the chaos at the start of the Belgian Grand Prix.

Mercedes' Michael Schumacher and Nico Rosberg didn't set a time in the final part of qualifying, so will share the fifth row of the grid.

Nico Hulkenberg narrowly missed out on a spot in the top 10, as did Kimi Raikkonen, Felipe Massa and Sergio Perez. Torro Rosso's Daniel Ricciardo and Jean-Eric Vergne will start alongside each other in 15th and 16th, respectively.

The biggest shock of the day, though, was Kamui Kobayashi, who had his worst qualifying of the season. The Sauber driver failed to make it out of Q1 but does inherit 17th place on the grid from Bruno Senna.

Senna managed to squeeze his way into Q2, but his day was cut short when he clobbered the wall at turn 21. He crawled back to the pits with suspension damage and will start down in 22nd, due to a five-place penalty for a gearbox change.

The only other driver with a grid penalty is Pedro de la Rosa, which is also for a gearbox change. But as the HRT driver qualified last, the penalty has no effect.

Marussia's Charles Pic has received a unprecedented penalty, for passing under red flags during the final practice session. He gets 20 seconds added to his race time as well as a day's "Community Service" for the FIA.

The FIA said: “Penalty of 20 seconds to be added to the driver’s race time and in addition the driver and his team engineer to perform one day’s Community Service for FIA Action for Road Safety campaign at the instruction of the FIA President.

“The driver and team representative conceded the breach which involved the driver passing 4 sets of red lights/flags, then overtaking another car.”

2012 Singapore Grand Prix grid

107 per cent time: 1'55.226* Five-place penalty for a gearbox change