Jenson Button grabbed the most important pole position of his career on another day of woe for fellow Briton Lewis Hamilton.

The current championship leader made it four poles in six races this year in his Brawn GP ahead of Sunday's Monaco Grand Prix with a stirring lap of one minute 14.902 seconds.

Button will have a resurgent Kimi Raikkonen alongside him on the front row in his Ferrari, with Brawn teammate Rubens Barrichello directly behind him for the 78-lap race around the streets of the Principality.

As for Hamilton, his season took another turn for the worse when he slid into a tyre wall on entry into the Mirabeau in Q1, damaging his left-rear wheel and leaving him to start from 16th.

It meant for the first time in his F1 career Hamilton had failed to make Q2, missing the cut by just 0.016secs as he had at least posted one hot lap prior to his crash.

"It's a shame because the weekend had been going so well. I want to apologise to the team for wasting their time. "It's tough, but you have to learn from these mistakes and I will. I will just have to try and make up for it in the race.

"But going for a race win is over."

Hamilton had earlier this week professed rediscovering his love of F1 upon returning to the circuit where he scored such a famous win last year en route to taking the title.