Rosberg Pockets Pole with dominant Qualifying performance in Austin

Nico Rosberg will start from pole position for the ninth time this season and for his first time in the US after beating Mercedes team-mate Lewis Hamilton in the Q3 shootout in Austin ahead of Sunday's US Grand Prix. Afterwards, Hamilton admitted he had suffered with brake issues throughout the one-hour session.

Hamilton topped the opening segment, but thereafter slid back behind his team-mate and Rosberg, who on Friday had claimed to have time in his "pocket", set the quickest times of both Q2 and the final 12-minute segment. Rosberg beat Hamilton to the front of the grid by 0.376s.

Hamilton still had over four tenths of second in hand over Valtteri Bottas' Williams to secure Mercedes' 10th front row lock of the season.

Afterwards Rosberg described his elation at beating his team mate for the 10th time in 17 races.

"A great day, really happy," he said. "It worked out really well. Together with my engineers I arrived at a car in the end in qualifying which I was really happy with.

"The balance was good. It was quite a challenge because the wind was changing and this morning the conditions were quite different.

"It was a lot colder and it wasn't that easy to get everything right but in the end we got to a great setup a great car so I'm pleased with that. First place today is awesome but it's the race that counts so we still need to focus full on tomorrow and bring it home.

In contrast Hamilton struggled with severe problems under braking, a series of lock ups betraying an underlying issue that he admits could hamper him during the race.

"Obviously Nico did a great job today. I really struggled with braking. When you look at the brake temperatures my left (front) brake was always 100 degrees less than the right front brake and it just kept catching no matter what I did.

"Even if I braked earlier and tried to save it it would still lock so that really perhaps where I was losing a lot of the time but even if that was not the case I think Nico was perhaps too quick today.

I need to see if they can maybe scrub them down (for tomorrow)."

Bottas thanked his Williams team for "a really nice and solid qualifying" after ending the day best of the rest in third for the fifth time in seven races .299s clear of team mate Felipe Massa.

First non-Mercedes powered driver award went to Daniel Ricciardo, whose Red Bull Renault was over three-tenths of a second faster than Fernando Alonso's sixth placed Ferrari, the latter continuing his qualifying dominance over Kimi Raikkonen by just under two tenths of a second and three places on the time sheet.

Jenson Button finished seventh, the 2009 world champion drawing to within one place of team-mate Kevin Magnussen in the season qualifying head to head with a time five hundredths of a second better than the Dane, However, Button will go back five places on the grid due to a gearbox change.

Hero of qualifying was Adrian Sutil, who managed Sauber's first top-10 qualifying performance of the year and will be looking forward to starting ninth for the Swiss squad, still to register a point in the world championship this season.

Sutil's heroics in Q2 consigned Pastor Maldonado to 11th, the Venezuelan missing out with a lock up on his final run. It was still comfortably the Lotus man's best qualifying performance of the season and fully seven places ahead of team mate Romain Grosjean on the time sheet.

Sergio Perez steered his Force India to 12th fastest, four hundredths of a second faster than team mate Nico Hulkenberg. The Mexican driver professed himself satisfied with his effort saying that it was best he could manage with one set of soft tyres having just scraped through to Q2.

Daniel Kvyat headed a struggling Toro Rosso duo, the Russian 14th quickest, a tenth of a second behind Hulkenberg, on his first visit to Austin, though a change of engine component means a 10-place grid penalty.

Vergne headed the four drivers out after Q1, the Toro Rosso driver's mechanics having hurriedly installed a new power unit ahead of the session which resulted in his second worst qualifying result of the season.

Esteban Guttierez qualified his Sauber 16th for the third time in five races just under a tenth of a second ahead of Vettel, whose single timed run was comfortably inside 107% of Hamilton's Q1 best thus satisfying the stewards.

Propping up the time sheets after a tyre smoking lockup at turn 12 spoiled Romain Grosjean's final run in a Lotus he described as "not as good as this morning."

2014 United States Grand Prix – Qualifying Result

1 Nico Rosberg Mercedes 1:38.303  1:36.290  1:36.067 20

2 Lewis Hamilton Mercedes 1:37.196  1:37.287  1:36.443 16

3 Valtteri Bottas Williams 1:38.249  1:37.499  1:36.906 19

4 Felipe Massa Williams 1:37.877  1:37.347  1:37.205 20

5 Daniel Ricciardo Red Bull Racing 1:38.814  1:37.873  1:37.244 17

6 Fernando Alonso Ferrari 1:38.349  1:38.010  1:37.610 16

7 Jenson Button McLaren 1:38.574  1:38.024  1:37.655 17

8 Kevin Magnussen McLaren 1:38.557  1:38.047  1:37.706 16

9 Kimi Räikkönen Ferrari 1:38.669  1:38.263  1:37.804 22

10 Adrian Sutil Sauber 1:38.855  1:38.378  1:38.810 15

11 Pastor Maldonado Lotus 1:38.608  1:38.467  16

12 Sergio Perez Force India 1:39.200  1:38.554  16

13 Nico Hulkenberg Force India 1:38.931  1:38.598  16

14 Daniil Kvyat Toro Rosso 1:38.936  1:38.699  17

15 Jean-Eric Vergne Toro Rosso 1:39.250   10

16 Esteban Gutierrez Sauber 1:39.555   10

17 Sebastian Vettel Red Bull Racing 1:39.621   3

18 Romain Grosjean Lotus 1:39.679   8