SEPANG, Malaysia, March 22, 2008 (AFP) - Brazilian Felipe Massa grabbed pole position and then declared that Ferrari´s title challenge would start here at Sepang in Sunday´s Malaysian Grand Prix.

Just a week after their embarrassing exit from the Australian Grand Prix, where somehow Ferrari collected a point even though both of their cars failed to finish, the 26-year-old Brazilian put a smile back on his team´s faces.

"This is where the season starts for us now, this is where we start to fight for the championship," said Massa.

Massa secured the 10th pole of his career with a fast lap in Q3 to become the seventh Ferrari man on pole at Sepang in the 10-year history of the race. He was almost half-a-second faster than Ferrari team-mate Kimi Raikkonen, the defending world champion, who will line up alongside him in second place on the grid.

"I am so happy, but the job is not done -- this is only the start," said a delighted Massa. "I managed to make a fantastic lap in Q3. I did two great laps and luckily both were without mistakes.

"In Q2 I didn´t make a very good lap. I was struggling a little bit with the grip on the tyres and also I didn´t do a very good last sector as well. I was just braking a little bit too early at turn 14, it was just stupid mistakes, just stupid luck... then I managed to put everything together in Q3."

Massa said an all-Ferrari front row was the perfect way to bounce back from the disasters in Australia, where both cars failed to finish and both drivers had mid-race spins.

"Definitely the championship is starting now because what happened in the last race was incredible, we didn´t expect that," he said.

"We did a very good job during the winter and coming to the first race we didn´t expect the problems we had, but hopefully we now can put that behind us."