Qualifying
It was business as usual at the front as Vettel dominated qualifying to take pole position from his teammate Mark Webber, who hooked up a great lap to make it a front row lock out for Red Bull Racing. Behind them came a storming Sauber in the form of Nico Hulkenberg, putting in a single timed lap in Q3 to fly into third place on the grid. Gutierrez couldn't emulate his team leaders extraordinary performance, getting eliminated in Q1 and 17th place, though he was closer than previous races and the condensed nature of the field on a high-speed track made margins finer. Ferrari followed up as a pair, with a stronger qualifying than has been seen recently. Despite attempting to provide a slipstream for Fernando Alonso, Massa drove a great lap to steal fourth place by a tenth of a second over his teammate, coming in fifth with some debated radio messages to the pit wall. Ferrari still lack the one-lap pace though. Rosberg brought the first Mercedes in for sixth place, which didn't particularly please him, however overall he was satisfied given the problems he had in practice that prevented him running on Saturday morning ahead of qualifying. A downbeat Lewis Hamilton only managed 12th, as he made a mistake and ran wide through Parabolica onto the gravel, damaging his car and blowing the lap he was on. He was then impeded by Sutil on his final run in Q2, leaving him outside the top ten. He took full responsibility for it, and cut a dejected figure in the paddock afterwards, suggesting there was a lot on his mind as Mercedes had their worst qualifying of the year. After failing to quite deliver at Spa, Torro Rosso came good in Italy, with Ricciardo using their excellent top speed to get seventh place. Vergne made a similar mistake to Hamilton on his run in Q3, flying across the gravel in Parabolica and wrecking his lap, so he finished tenth in the final shoot out. McLaren had hoped for a little more, seeming to have lost an edge on performance by the time qualifying rolled around. On their 50th anniversary however they got both cars into the top ten, and were separated by a tiny gap as Perez took eighth place ahead of Button in ninth. The latter felt they might have been better to sit out the shoot out for strategic reasons, but hoped for rain come race day instead. Lotus headed things up outside the top ten, with 11th-placed Raikkonen feeling their package simply didn't work too well at Monza and being relatively unsurprised at their position. Grosjean underlined things in 13th, struggling for grip and unable to find the rhythm he managed in free practice. Lotus operations director Alan Permane, like Jenson Button, hoped for rain come race day. Force India struggled, only just making it into Q2, with Sutil securing 14th place which he felt was the maximum the car could achieve. He was later penalised for blocking Hamilton as he accelerated onto his quick lap, dropping three places to start 17th. Di Resta, after suffering brake problems in FP3, hadn't found an ideal setup before the race for the grid and could only scrape through into 16th, but started 15th following his teammates penalty. Amongst them, Williams took 15th with Maldonado, promoted to 14th. He was caught by the weighbridge in Q2 and held up, meaning he couldn't get any closer to the top ten, where he had been in Q1. Bottas felt he'd done a good job with his lap on the options, only to find himself eliminated in 18th place. He hoped their race pace would be better and offer more opportunity to show themselves on Sunday. Caterham showed they really had the measure of Marussia at the back; Van der Garde had issues with warming the front tyres up, but hooked up his hot laps cleanly to take 19th place with a mid 1m26s lap, though they failed to threaten the Williams. Pic was only a tenth behind for 20th, and showed that work overnight had improved the car ahead of qualifying. He failed to find the balance he'd enjoyed in final practice however, and couldn't beat his teammate. Bianchi was frustrated with balance problems and couldn't get completely comfortable with the car, leaving him to bring it home 21st. After a positive Friday, Chilton was disappointed to not find decent pace for qualifying, only to find afterwards that there had been a fuelling error and he was carrying almost 20kg excess fuel in the car.