Sport World sport
Cool young German Sebastian Vettel stole the limelight from returning legend Michael Schumacher and three other world champions when he seized pole for Sunday's season-opening Bahrain Grand Prix.
The 22-year-old rising star picked up where he left off last season, when he won the closing race in Abu Dhabi, by clocking a best lap of one minute and 54.101 seconds to take the prime starting position in Saturday's final qualifying.
It will be his sixth pole.
This was one-tenth of a second better than second-placed Brazilian Felipe Massa, of Ferrari, making his first race weekend appearance since his horrific accident in Hungary last August.
It was also more than a second quicker than fourth-placed Lewis Hamilton of McLaren and 1.4 seconds better than Schumacher's best Q3 lap for Mercedes - a demonstration of pace that showed Vettel and Red Bull will start Sunday's 49-laps race with a clear advantage in raw speed.
Schumacher, making his comeback after three years, wound up in seventh place and was outpaced by not only Vettel, but also his Mercedes team-mate and compatriot Nico Rosberg, who qualified fifth.
It was a better day for Schumacher's old team Ferrari who finished with Massa second on the grid and new boy two-times champion Fernando Alonso third.
On a fine, dry and hot day at the Sakhir circuit, where the air temperatures touched 33 degrees Celsius, there were few surprises and the three new teams, Virgin, Lotus and Hispania, struggled valiantly as they battled to fill the last six spots on the 24-car grid.
