Zoom A dominant display from Felipe Massa

The rain threatened to be a factor this afternoon in qualifying for the Malaysian Grand Prix but never materialised as expected allowing Ferrari to show its raw speed around the 5.543km Sepang circuit.

Felipe Massa claimed pole position, the tenth of his career, with a lap almost half a second clear of team-mate Kimi Raikkonen. The F2008 has run flawlessly today and the team dominated qualifying leaving Heikki Kovalainen* and Lewis Hamilton* very much second best on the second row of the grid.

Kovalainen got the better of McLaren team-mate Hamilton by a tenth of a second and starts third, four-tenths adrift of Raikkonen and over eight-tenths off pole man Massa.

Jarno Trulli was on superb form again for Toyota as he qualified in fifth position, five places ahead of team-mate Timo Glock. Showing the progress Toyota has made, both cars are firmly in the top ten again.

BMW Sauber will be a little disappointed to see Robert Kubica and Nick Heidfeld sixth and seventh fastest. For Heidfeld, he was faced with the potentially dangerous situation as he embarked on his final hot laps as many of his rivals trickled back to the pits on tick-over to save fuel.

The German racer weaved his way through the traffic and did manage to pick up one position as he demoted Mark Webber to eighth. It was a tricky situation and something the FIA should address*.

Red Bull Renault will be relieved to have had an incident free day. Webber lines up eighth and David Coulthard 12th.

Like Heidfeld, Fernando Alonso had to negotiate slow cars on his final hot lap but unlike the BMW Sauber driver, was unable to improve his time. Alonso lines up ninth with Renault team-mate Nelson Piquet an improved 13th.

Jenson Button came close to making it into the final round of qualifying in his Honda, but will be pretty happy to line up 11th with team-mate Rubens Barrichello recovering from a loss of track time in the morning to qualify 14th.

Sebastian Vettel had threatened to shake up the order again, but on this occasion the Toro Rosso racer was unable to challenge the big guns. Vettel lines up 15th while a mistake from team-mate Sebastien Bourdais saw him run off track and lose his final run. The Champ Car star lines up 18th. It was a disappointing day for the Williams Toyota team. Nico Rosberg lost time in the morning practice session with a hydraulics issue and never seemed to recover as he qualified 16th. Kazuki Nakajima was 18th fastest today, but drops to the back of the grid due to his Melbourne penalty.