Vettel lapped the 3.194-mile, 17-turn Silverstone Circuit in one minute, 19.509 seconds for his second consecutive pole. He finished nearly four-tenths of a second ahead of Button's teammate Rubens Barrichello, who edged Mark Webber to prevent Red Bull from taking the front row. Vettel also won the pole for the Turkish Grand Prix two weeks ago.

"It's been a fantastic weekend," Vettel said. "From the beginning to the end, we didn't have a single problem. All the new parts we brought here seem to work very well, so I think we have made a step forward."

Vettel, at age 21, became the youngest pole sitter and grand prix winner in Formula One history last September in Monza, Italy. The German driver also started on the pole and won the Chinese Grand Prix in April.

Barrichello's time of 1:19.856 gave the Brazilian his first front row starting position since the season-opener in Melbourne, Australia.

"It was the best lap of the weekend for me in Q3, where it took the extreme of the car," Barrichello said. "Silverstone has always been quite good for me."

Webber claimed he was held up by Ferrari's Kimi Raikkonen during the third qualifying session, which prevented him from winning his first career F1 pole.

"I would have liked a slightly cleaner run on my last Q3 lap," Webber said. "Kimi, I don't know if he was drinking some Vodka or dreaming or something. I don't know what the hell he was doing. He should have been on the right, but he was on the racing line, dreaming. That wrecked my rhythm."

Toyota's Jarno Trulli qualified fourth, and Kazuki Nakajima from Williams was fifth.

Button, who has dominated the season with six wins in the first seven grand prix, qualified a surprising sixth.

"I struggled massively with understeer in the high speed corners and then had to oversteer at low speed, so it wasn't the best balance for such a competitive qualifying session," Button said.

Nico Rosberg from Williams, Toyota's Timo Glock, Raikkonen and Fernando Alonso from Renault completed the top-10.

McLaren's Lewis Hamilton, the defending winner of the British GP, failed to advance from the first session for the third straight race after another dismal qualifying run.

"I was pushing as hard as I could, but our car is too slow." Hamilton said.

Hamilton will start a career-worst 19th.

Adrian Sutil crashed in the final seconds of Q1. Sutil skidded off the track and slammed into the barriers at high speed. He walked away from the incident uninjured. Sutil will start 18th.