Ferrari's Sebastian Vettel took pole at the Malaysian Grand Prix by fending off current Drivers Champion and Mercedes-Benz driver, Lewis Hamilton.

The former World Champion, who joined the Italian team this year as Fernando Alonso's replacement, trumped the Mercedes cars who were suffering from tyre problems in the country's tropical heat.

Vettel, who was the second car on the grid, took the lead when Hamilton was called in for a pit stop during a safety car deployment, leaving the German out on the track to build a lead.

Mercedes decided to run their cars on slower hard tyres throughout the majority of race while Vettel, for the most part, ran on the faster medium Pirelli's.

Hamilton went in for another pitstop, which was only seven laps after Vettel came in for his first, causing him to trail 24 seconds behind the Italian car when he came out.

Mercedes called in Hamilton for one last time on lap 38, thinking that they could still catch up with the German; he rejoined the track trailing 14 seconds behind Vettel.

Although Hamilton's car was now faster, the Briton was unable to chase down the Ferrari with Vettel maintaining a distance of approximately 10 seconds.

Tensions rose within the Mercedes garage when Hamilton questioned the team's decision of running him on hard tyres at the race's critical final laps.

Engineers revealed that his only other option was to run on a set of worn-out medium tyres - stemming from their decision to use faster tyres in the first part of qualifying and committing to only running on a single set of mediums throughout the race.

The former World Champion's Ferrari took home the checkered flag while team mate Kimi Raikkonen managed fourth place. 

Vettel's win marks the 40th of his career, one short of Ayrton Senna, a driver who holds third place in the all-time record.