Monza, Italy (My Sportsbook) - Toro Rosso's Sebastian Vettel overcame rainy conditions to win Saturday's qualifying session for the Italian Grand Prix and became Formula One's youngest-ever pole sitter. The 21-year-old German recorded a lap time of one minute, 37.555 seconds during the third and final qualifying session to capture his first career pole in his 21st Grand Prix start.

"Unbelievable, incredible," Vettel said. "The conditions were so difficult today, a lot of water. You never knew how much water to expect. Sometimes you were lucky not to lose the car. What can I say, I never dreamed of being on the pole."

Vettel also gave Toro Rosso its first F1 pole.

Starting alongside Vettel will be McLaren's Heikki Kovalainen, who recorded a time of 1:37.631.

Mark Webber (1:38.117) and Sebastien Bourdais (1:38.445) will make up row two.

Surprisingly, current points leader Lewis Hamilton and defending World Champion Kimi Raikkonen failed to advance into the third session as track conditions deteriorated during the second round. Hamilton qualified 15th, making it the first time the Briton failed to appear in the final session in his F1 career.

"It was a joint decision to go out on wet-weather tires at the start of Q2 - partly mine and partly my engineers," Hamilton said. "We thought it was the right way to go at the time because it was getting dryer but the grip-level was poor so I came in and switched to extremes. By the time I got out, it had begun to rain and I just missed the window when the track was at its fastest. It was also very hard to pick out the braking points."

Raikkonen, who extended his contract with Ferrari through 2010 this week, qualified 14th.

"There's little to say, and I am definitely not happy with this result," Raikkonen said. "I was unable to do a time in Q2 when the conditions would still have made it possible and then it was impossible to catch up. On that lap, I went off at Ascari where there was a lot of water on the track, which meant I didn't make it through to the next session. Now we must try and make the best of this situation which is definitely not ideal."

Hamilton enters the Italian GP with just a two-point lead over Felipe Massa, who will start sixth.

The race begins Sunday at 8 a.m. (et).