Felipe Massa revived Ferrari's spirits by taking the Malaysian Grand Prix pole position for the second year in a row yesterday.
The Brazilian will have champion team-mate Kimi Raikkonen alongside, with the Finn lapping 0.482 seconds slower than Massa's 1:35.748, in a boost for a team fighting back from a nightmare start to the season in Australia last weekend.
All five of Massa's Formula One victories have come off pole position, although he finished only fifth in Malaysia last year, and Ferrari have now claimed seven of the 10 pole positions to date at Sepang.
McLaren's Heikki Kovalainen and Lewis Hamilton, who won the season-opener in Australia, qualified third and fourth fastest but were later demoted five places for impeding rivals in qualifying.
"I managed to make a fantastic lap in Q3, which is the most important one so I'm really pleased with that," Massa said of the third qualifying session.
The 26-year-old conceded he had been far from perfect in the second qualifying session, making some "stupid mistakes" as his car struggled for grip.
"But I managed to put everything together for Q3 and did a great lap."
Neither Ferrari finished in Melbourne, the Italian team's worst start to a Formula One campaign since 1992. But the Brazilian said Malaysia represented a clean slate for the team.
"Our championship is starting now because the last race was incredible, we didn't expect that to happen," he said of the Albert Park season-opener.
"We did a really good job in the winter but coming to the first race and having a lot of problems like we did, it was unexpected.
"Hopefully, now we can manage to put everything together to have a very consistent and good championship."
Raikkonen was disappointed with his final qualifying session after setting the fastest time of the weekend in the second session.
"I was not too happy with the last section of qualifying. I just could not get a good grip or the best out of the car. But second is a good place to start and we should have a strong race," said the Finn.
"It's going to be a long, hot race and we are not sure about the weather but looking forward, we are quite happy."