Vettel flies to pole position in Oz

Sebastian Vettel gave his rivals a strong signal today as he took a dominant pole position for the opening round of the season.

The German was significantly faster than his rivals throughout the qualifying session and was never challenged for the top spot.

McLaren’s Lewis Hamilton dashed Red Bull Racing’s hopes of locking out the front row as he set the second fastest time under the chequered flag.

Mark Webber will line up on the second row with Jenson Button by his side. Alonso qualified in sixth place and will share the third row with Renault’s Vitaly Petrov. The fourth row of the grid will be shared by Rosberg and Massa, while Kobayashi and Buemi will make up the fifth row.

Let’s have a look at how the session panned out :

Q1

Having shown some good pace in practice, the Red Bull drivers quickly moved to the top of the timesheet but found strong opposition from McLaren’s Lewis Hamilton.

Lap times were very close in the last part of this first segment of qualifying with the first eight drivers covered by seven tenths of a second. Interestingly enough, with five minutes to go, both Ferraris were not in the top ten.

Alonso swiftly rectified it by setting the third fastest time, on the soft tyre.

As the chequered flag fell off, Vettel was leading the way from Hamilton, a surprising Vitaly Petrov and Alonso. Kobayashi was fourth for Sauber with his rookie teammate Sergio Perez fifth fastest.

At the bottom of the timesheet, neither Liuzzi nor Karthikeyan could qualify within 107% of Vettel’s best lap time. The other drivers eliminated were D’Ambrosio, Glock, Trulli, Kovalainen and a really disappointing Nick Heidfeld.

Q2

As the Toro Rossos were setting the early pace, Rubens Barrichello lost control of his Williams at Turn 3 and ended up in the gravel trap. He couldn’t keep the engine running and was out of the session.

Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button then took over at the front but their leadership was short-lived as both Red Bulls joined the action. Vettel immediately jumped up the leaderboard with a blistering 1’24’’090. His teammate Webber joined him at the front but was almost six tenths slower than him.

Hamilton moved up to P2 in the closing moments of the session but Vettel still enjoyed a quite comfortable margin at the front.

Those who couldn’t make it through were Michael Schumacher (by just some hundredths of a second), Jaime Alguersuari, Sergio Perez, Paul di Resta, Pastor Maldonado, Adrian Sutil (who had a spin at the exit of the final corner) and Rubens Barrichello.

Q3

Lewis Hamilton kicked off the action and was quickly joined on track by his teammate Button. His benchmark time was a 1’24’’501 and was lowered to a 1’23’’529 by Sebastian Vettel a few seconds later.

Coming after his teammate, Mark Webber took P2. The four of them then came back in the pits to take on a fresh set of soft tyres.

Felipe Massa had just left the pitlane when he spun his Ferrari at Turn 1. In the meantime, Fernando Alonso set the fifth fastest time.

Sebastian Vettel couldn’t improve his time on his last attempt, even though he was only marginally slower, but still held on to pole position. Lewis Hamilton deprived Red Bull from a front row lock-out as he demoted Webber down to third. Button was fourth fastest.