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Mark Webber took pole position at the Belgian Grand Prix in a haphazard and unpredictable qualifying session dictated by changing weather. Spa justified its reputation as a track that threw surprises as rainy and dry conditions alternated during the qualifying sessions leaving the teams guessing. Rain came calling for the last few minutes which meant Mark Webber's fastest time of 1:45:778 remained first. Lewis Hamilton came in second after consistently doing well in both conditions throughout qualifying while the Renault of Robert Kubica fitted for the first time with an F-duct came in third. Sebastian Vettel took the second spot in the second row for tomorrow's race giving Red Bull the advantage going into the first turn. He is followed by the McLaren of Jenson Button in 5th. Ferrari were left disappointed as Massa and Alonso could only manage 6th and 10th. The two scarlet cars never looked competitive enough and were unlikely to challenge at the top of the field.

The first qualifying sessions got underway with drama as Vitaly Petrov got it all wrong and spun out at turn 9 effectively ending his qualifying session and hurting his chances of keeping his Renault seat, especially when his counterpart starts on the second row of the grid. Mercedes' woes were compounded early in the session when Nico Rosberg's car needed a new gearbox, resulting in an automatic  5 place penalty.

The rain started pouring as soon the Q1 got underway and it resulted in chaos as cars on slick tyres struggled for grip on the greasy track. As the rain continued, Q1 became a free for all battle with places up for grabs. At one point the Lotus of Jarno Trulli was ahead of Vettel's Red Bull.

The track started drying with a few minutes to spare in the session and this helped bring normalcy to proceedings. At the end of Q1 Trulli, Kobayashi, Senna, Yamamoto, De la Rosa, Di Grassi and Petrov were eliminated. The big gainers were Lotus' Heikki Kovailainen and  Virgin's Timo Glock, who were both beneficiaries of the Saubers crashing out. The HRTs were eliminated as usual and left them as the only team to have not made it to Q2 this season.

Q2 was a dry session but the earlier rain had left damp patches on the track. Michael Schumacher raised a few eyebrows when he briefly took P1 but as the track dried, the usual suspects chipped away the seconds. Hamilton looked impressive and took the lead with a minute left in Q2 with a time of 1m46.441s. At this point Hulkenberg, Sutil, Rosberg, Barrichello, Kovalainen, Glock and Liuzzi were in the red zone. Sutil quickly put in a flyer to jump to fifth, Barrichelo and Hulkenberger improved as well to push Mercedes out of the top 10. Schumacher's early session heroics ending in relegation, going to show just how much the track conditions were varying.

At the end of Q2 the two Mercedes cars along with the two Toro Rosso's were eliminated. They were joined by Force India's Vitantonio Liuzzi, Lotus' Kovalainen and Virgin's Timo Glock, in their long drive back to the pit lane.

Q3 started dry, with Lewis Hamilton first on track. With forecasts of impending rain, the cars were quickly out of the pits. Hamilton improved his earlier timing to a 1m46.203.The two Red Bulls quickly bettered that timing followed by Renault's Kubica. With 5 minutes left in the session the top 5 were Webber, Kubica, Vettel, Hamilton and Massa. Adrian Sutil had a battle with the Williams' and managed to split the two to take the 8th best time. The big surprise was Fernando Alonso, who put in a disappointing first lap and failed to make up for it. With two minutes left in the session, rain came back at the La Source corner meaning Webber was most definitely assured of pole. Lewis Hamilton put in a sensational lap, tackling a wet turn 1 to snatch second place away from Robert Kubica.

After the sessions Hamilton said "It was quite a tricky session through the whole qualifying, I got out for my first lap, the first one out. Turn 14 was drying up but I was first one to get there and didn't know how much to push. It was a bit of a disappointing first lap, I wasn't able to hold the time out of the tyres.Then I got the opportunity on the second lap which was good lap apart from Turn 1. That was wet and a little bit damp, I lost time there. But the rest of the track was dry and I was able to utilise the tyres and pull out the time. I think I was a tenth behind Mark, there was the potential there to be in front in P1, but to be P2 on front row is a good position for us."

Robert Kubica meanwhile said his engine cut out on the way back to the pits denying him another lap. Speaking to reporters after Q3 Kubica said "The car cut out just before the pit lane on my in-lap, and after the mechanics had pushed me back to the garage, we didn't have time to do another run. At the end of the session, I was standing in the pits, watching the other cars and praying for rain when a few drops started to fall - and only Lewis was able to improve his time. It meant I lost a place on the front row, but I am still in a strong position for tomorrow, and now we need to wait and see what happens - with the race and with the weather."

The rest of the grid stayed the same, including Fernando Alonso in 10th, heavily affecting his Championship bid.

The biggest losers for the day were however Mercedes GP, who will start in 16th and 21st owing to the penalties their drivers face. After Qualifying Ross Brawn said "It is obviously a difficult weekend for us with the problems that we have had with Michael being put back ten places and now the gearbox issue with Nico which has lost us five places. We didn't look too bad in various parts of qualifying today and when we went out at the end of Q2, we had plenty of time for decent runs however we had a problem with a driver who was on his in-lap and holding our drivers up. Michael and Nico ended up missing out on Q3 by fractions of a second due to another driver which is frustrating." Mercedes will be lucky if they get a point tomorrow, but that seems unlikely and they look set to fall behind Renault in the Constructors' race.

Though Spa delivered yet another fascinating qualifying session, it still could not prevent a Red Bull pole, the Austrian team making it 12 out of 13 this year. Mark Webber admitted in the press conference that getting the first lap right was critical. "We knew the first lap was going to be pretty important because round here it is so unpredictable," Webber said. "The weather has been unique, even for Spa. It has been so on and off.So to have a pretty clean qualifying was very important. The first lap I was happy with, but you never know in this company if it is enough or not. It was nice to be on pole halfway through Q3 and going into second run, but the weather made it more difficult to improve on our second attempt."

It's likely to be a partially wet race tomorrow and under rainy conditions Lewis Hamilton on the front row would be the man to beat. He was denied a victory in 2008 and this could well be his year at Spa. But predictions are pretty pointless when it rains at Spa, and one hopes that there are more surprises in store tomorrow for the big race.

Qualifying Results: