Button on pole again

Jenson Button grabbed the most important pole position of his career on another day of woe for fellow Briton Lewis Hamilton.

The current championship leader made it four poles in six races this year in his Brawn GP ahead of Sunday's Monaco Grand Prix with a stirring lap of one minute 14.902 seconds. Button will have a resurgent Kimi Raikkonen alongside him on the front row in his Ferrari, with Brawn team-mate Rubens Barrichello directly behind him for the 78-lap race around the streets of the Principality.

As for Hamilton, his season took another turn for the worse when he slid into a tyre wall on entry into the Mirabeau in Q1, damaging his left-rear wheel. He will start from 16th.

It meant for the first time in his F1 career Hamilton had failed to make Q2, missing the cut by just 0.016secs as he had at least posted one hot lap prior to his crash.

Behind the leading front three are Red Bull's Sebastian Vettel and Ferrari's Felipe Massa, followed by Williams' Nico Rosberg and Heikki Kovalainen in his McLaren.

Mark Webber is eighth in his Red Bull, with the top 10 completed by Renault's Fernando Alonso and Kazuki Nakajima in his Williams.