Lewis Hamilton will start his third consecutive race from pole after edging Sebastian Vettel for first place at the Hungarian Grand Prix.
The Mercedes driver blasted out a lightning-fast final lap of the qualifying session to edge the German by four hundredths of a second, going around the Hungaroring in a time of one minute 19.388 seconds.
Vettel (1:19.426s) will take comfort from Hamilton's failure to convert pole on race day in the previous two races, with the Red Bull star having come from second to win his home grand prix for the first time in Germany last time out.
After struggling in Friday's practice, Hamilton found surprising speed, although it was team-mate Nico Rosberg who set the pace in the first two sessions.
The opening run saw the Caterhams and Marussias drop out as expected, with Sauber's Esteban Gutierrez and Paul di Resta of Force India joining them.
Rosberg and Hamilton jostled for the lead in Q2, as Red Bull were given a scare when KERS failed to operate on Mark Webber's car.
The Australian made it through with a late surge, however, while Jenson Button was edged out by McLaren team-mate Sergio Perez.
Force India's Adrian Sutil, Sauber's Nico Hulkenberg and Jean-Eric Vergne of Toro Rosso also failed to make it to the top-10 shoot-out, as did Williams pair Pastor Maldonado and Valtteri Bottas.
With most laps in the final session coming in around 1min 20secs, Vettel threw on a fresh set of soft tyres and laid down a strong marker of 1min 19.506secs, eight tenths quicker than anybody else.
But Hamilton went even better with his very last lap and, although Vettel improved on his previous time, he could not eke the Brit out of pole position.
Romain Grosjean (1:19.595s), who had topped the timesheets in Saturday's final practice, will start third for Lotus, with Rosberg (1:19.720s) alongside him on the second row.
The Ferraris of Fernando Alonso and Felipe Massa will start fifth and seventh respectively, separated by the Lotus of Kimi Raikkonen.
Daniel Ricciardo continued his fine string of Saturday performances, coming eighth for Toro Rosso, while Perez only set a time on the medium tyres and will start ninth, ahead of Webber, who did not set a time.