Brawn GP's Jenson Button took pole position yesterday for today's Malaysian Formula One Grand Prix, making it back-to-back poles for the English driver.

Button, winner of last week's season-opening Australian GP, set a time of 1 minute, 35.181 seconds yesterday to finish almost a tenth of a second ahead of Toyota's Jarno Trulli.

Red Bull's Sebastian Vettel was third but receives a ten-place grid penalty for an incident in the previous race at Melbourne. Rubens Barrichello was fourth quickest but gets a five-place penalty for changing a gearbox.

Ferrari's Felipe Massa, who earned pole here last year, was eliminated in the first session of qualifying and will start from 16th.

Massa finished only four laps in the first qualifying session at the Sepang Circuit, as Ferrari believed his time would be good enough to go through to the second period without having to use another set of soft tires.

But the Brazilian then watched incredulously from the garage as some rivals performed late lap times that dropped him into the bottom five, knocking him out of qualifying.

"I blame everybody. I blame me, I blame my engineer, I blame everybody who are working in the pit," Massa said. "It was a huge wake-up call that now we need to use our tires, we need to use what we have because to pass through every session is very difficult."

Massa said Ferrari was living off memories of its past dominance and needs to acknowledge that the competition has improved.

The penalties for Vettel and Barrichello promotes Toyota's Timo Glock to third on the grid – his best ever starting position for a grand prix – with Williams' Nico Rosberg up to fourth.

Red Bull's Mark Webber will begin in fifth spot, sharing the third row with BMW's Robert Kubica.

Ferrari's Kimi Raikkonen, who won here last year, will begin from seventh, ahead of Renault's Fernando Alonso.

Trulli was the last man on a flying lap and looked a chance of taking only the third pole position in Toyota's time in F1, but could not quite manage it.