Vettel storms to Australian GP pole

A day later than originally planned (due to adverse weather conditions) and just over five hours before the lights go out for the start of the Australian Grand Prix at Albert Park, Melbourne, it is Sebastian Vettel who picked up where he left off in 2012, claiming his pole position for the race, and his first pole position of the new season. Vettel’s teammate Mark Webber comfortably secured second place on the grid, giving Red Bull Racing their first front row lockout of the year. Lewis Hamilton on his maiden qualifying session with Mercedes AMG F1 placed third.

Rain continued to fall over the circuit during the final qualifying sessions for the first race of the Formula 1 calendar, but not enough to stop the cars from competing for their place on the grid as it did on Saturday during Q1. The result was an interesting session where tyre strategy would make all the difference to the end result.

With Vettel, Webber and Hamilton occupying the first three starting positions on the grid for the Australian Grand Prix, an impressive outing in Q3 saw Ferrari’s Felipe Massa secure fourth on the grid, just ahead of his teammate Fernando Alonso on a rare occasion. The sister Mercedes car of Nico Rosberg placed sixth with the Lotus F1 cars of Raikkonen and Grosjean in eighth and ninth. Jenson Button’s McLaren rounds out the top ten on the grid with Button almost a full three seconds off the pace set by pack leader Sebastian Vettel.

Q2 got off to a relatively uneventful start (compared with Q1 on Saturday) when the majority of the sixteen remaining competitive cars took to the track early to avoid as much of the rain predicated for later in the session as possible. Each team opted to go with the Pirelli Intermediate compound tyres in order to cope with the wet surface on the track and post as quick a lap as possible. McLaren made the only exception to the rule, deciding to try their drivers (Button and Perez) on the slick compound tyre.

As the moderately wet Q2 came to a close, Nico Hulkenberg’s Sauber was ‘best of the rest’ qualifying in eleventh position with returning F1 driver Adrian Sutil qualifying a strong twelfth in his first drive back with Sahara Force India in a year. The Toro Rosso cars of Jean-Eric Vergne and hometown hero Daniel Ricciardo were good enough for thirteenth and fourteenth – placing higher then both Williams F1 rival team cars and getting the teams’ year off to a good start.

Sergio Perez became the first ‘big name’ to drop out of contention for the top ten, failing to qualify for the third qualifying session when a mistake from McLaren saw the team opt to put Perez on the super-soft Pirelli slick compound before the track had dried out. A severe lack of on-track grip combined with a loss of time in the session meant Perez could only post a quick lap of 1:39.900, good enough for just fifteenth on the grid with rookie driver Bottas just behind in sixteenth for Williams.

Positions seventeen to twenty two were established during Q1 on Saturday before qualifying was called off due to unforeseen extreme weather circumstance.

Full qualifying times and results can be found below. The 2013 Formula 1 Rolex Australian Grand Prix starts later this afternoon; Sunday March 17th at 17:00 local time.

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