Sebastian Vettel withstood the Ferrari assault to claim pole position for the opening round of the new Formula One season, posting the fastest time in the third and final phase of a qualifying session dominated by Red Bull and the Scuderia.

Having ruled Q2, the German – who enters the season on the back of victory in the final round of 2009 – waited until the final few minutes of the session before venturing out, but made the most of his single flying lap to clock 1min 54.101secs.

Behind him, however, Ferrari duo Felipe Massa and Fernando Alonso, as well as Red Bull team-mate Mark Webber were still on track, but they could only manage second, third and sixth respectively, jostling interloper Lewis Hamilton into fourth and allowing Nico Rosberg to claim fifth on his debut for Mercedes.

Rosberg again had the upper hand on veteran team-mate Michael Schumacher, who improved as the last man across the line to bump reigning world champion Jenson Button out of seventh place, while Robert Kubica and Adrian Sutil – who held third spot for a time – completed the top ten order.

Each of the drivers will now have to start Sunday’s race on the tyres with which they set their fastest time, but all appear poised to take to the grid on the less-favourable soft compound and run short stints before their first pit-stops.

The hospital treating injured Ferrari driver Felipe Massa has offered a more serious assessment of the Brazilian’s condition, countering the Scuderia’s claim that the news was ‘positive’ following emergency surgery.

Massa was struck on the helmet by a piece of suspension shed by Rubens Barrichello’s Brawn GP machine towards the end of the Q2 phase of the session. The blow knocked Massa unconscious and caused him to spear off the circuit and into the tyre barrier at high speed. Clearly hurt and unable to vacate the cockpit under his own power, Massa was extricated from the car by medical teams and taken, first, to the Hungaroring’s medical centre, before being airlifted to the AEK Hospital in nearby Budapest.

Ferrari’s post-qualifying statement only discussed the incident, but reported that the 28-year old had ‘undergone surgery’, and that ‘the outcome of the procedure was positive’..

However, while hospital sources confirmed that Massa would ‘remain under observation in intensive care’, it offered a graver assessment of the Brazilian’s condition, reporting that he was being kept sedated on a respirator.

“Massa’s condition is serious, life-threatening but stable,” Medical director Peter Bazso told a news conference, before confirming chief surgeon Lajos Zsiros’ belief that Massa would be brought out from the sedation on Sunday.

The qualifying session for the 2009 Hungarian Grand Prix will likely go down as one of the oddest in recent memory, with an accident for Felipe Massa caused by an errant piece of rear suspension from the Brawn GP of Rubens Barrichello hitting the Ferrari star on the helmet – and a first pole position in 32 races for double F1 World Champion Fernando Alonso, though due to a timing failure, the man himself didn’t actually realise he had done it.

In cooler conditions than the previous day during practice, and with strong winds blowing, the all-important top ten shoot-out got underway without Massa, still in the Hungaroring’s medical centre following his blow to the head and hefty impact with the circuit’s tyre barriers.

The men on the move to begin with were Alonso, Heikki Kovalainen, Nico Rosberg, Lewis Hamilton – seeking a consecutive hat-trick of Hungarian poles – and the in-form Red Bull Racing pairing of German Grand Prix winner Mark Webber and Sebastian Vettel, but with the lap times continually tumbling, it could have gone one of a number of ways.

Confusion then swiftly set in, however, as F1’s official timing system went down, leaving drivers, teams, spectators and commentators alike all in the dark as to who was going quickly and who wasn’t. With chaos reigning in parc fermé afterwards, the drivers knew what times they personally had done – but not how fast any of their rivals had been. Alonso approached every one of his Q3 competitors to enquire about their lap times, and even as he stood on the scales to be weighed the Spaniard still seemed unsure that he had clinched the top spot.

Delayed celebrations they may have been for the Oviedo native and his Renault crew, but celebrations they nonetheless were, as the news was confirmed amidst a farcical ending to a qualifying hour that had endured for almost an hour-and-a-half. Alongside Alonso on the front row of the grid will be Vettel, with the sport’s youngest-ever grand prix-winner ably backed up by team-mate Webber in third, though the Australian arguably has the better position for the start, being on the grippier inside line.

The top ten was completed by Hamilton, Rosberg, Kovalainen, Kimi Raikkonen – who spoiled his initial effort with a scrappy end to the lap – Jenson Button, the improving Kazuki Nakajima for the third time in the last five races and the luckless Massa, though whether the latter will be able to take the start of the race remains unclear. The world championship leader only ventured out for a single run towards the end of the ten-minute segment, following suspension checks to his Mercedes-powered BGP 001 in an effort to ensure that he would encounter no similar failure to that of Barrichello.

The Red Bulls had swiftly proven to be on the pace in Q2, and Webber would wind up in P1 at the end of the 15-minute session, with Hamilton and the impressive Nakajima separating the New South Wales ace from the sister RB5 of Vettel in fourth. The reigning world champion, indeed, survived an off-track moment at turn four en route, but there would be far greater dramas in the same corner later on for Massa, who was hit on the helmet by a piece of flying debris, shot off-piste and embedded his Ferrari firmly in the tyre barriers. Though the Brazilian was eighth-quickest, behind team-mate Raikkonen, Button and Kovalainen, it took some time to extract the concussed São Paulista from his car, and the 28-year-old would take no further part in the action.

Alonso and early pace-setter Rosberg completed the Q3 graduates, with Sébastien Buemi narrowly missing out in the upgraded Scuderia Toro Rosso STR4, and Toyota duo Jarno Trulli and Timo Glock similarly falling at the second hurdle. There they were accompanied by birthday boy Nelsinho Piquet – confessing to having pushed a bit too hard in the upgraded Renault R29 for the first time – and, most surprisingly of all, Barrichello, the nine-time grand prix-winner blaming his broken rear suspension for not making it into the top ten for the first time all year. Brawn GP, indeed, looked to be far from the force they had been earlier on in the campaign, with Button only hauling himself to safety in sixth right at the end.

Raikkonen, too, at one stage appeared to be in perilous waters, with both of Maranello’s drivers struggling for grip throughout and enduring a number of grassy moments, whilst Kovalainen’s expected form was not overly apparent, with the defending race-winner making it through to the top ten shoot-out – but only just.

Felipe Massa has said that the new breed of F1 car will take some getting used to but expects to be on top of its by Ferrari’s next test.

Felipe Massa has claimed that the first outing for Ferrari’s new F60 race car was a positive one, despite not completing many laps or setting the world alight with sparkling times.

The Brazilian, who finished runner-up to McLaren’s Lewis Hamilton in last year’s F1 world championship, was entrusted with the shakedown of the 55th grand prix machine to roll out of Maranello, but endured a slow start to the day as the car completed sporadic laps amid the usual teething troubles after the day’s programme decamped to Mugello.

Admitting that he had not expected the F60 to have a flawless debut, however, Massa insisted that there had been enough good to encourage him ahead of the team’s first proper test with the car, at the new Portimao circuit in Portugal, later this month.