Vettel dominates Melbourne qualifying

Mar.27 (YF1) Sebastian Vettel again dug deep when it mattered to post a stunning lap in qualifying, for the Australian Grand Prix, which ensures that he starts the Albert Park race from pole position. Making it two top slot starts in two races.

The Red Bull driver dominated proceedings by topping the timing screens in Q1, Q2 and Q3. Each time his main rivals for top spot were team mate Mark Webber and Ferrari’s Fernando Alonso. While the latter two slugged it out in the early part of each session Vettel simply came along and annexed top spot.

Vettel’s time of 1 minute 23.919 seconds was 0.116 faster than Webber’s best and the German was the only driver to break out of the 1 minute 24 seconds zone. Upon learning of his accomplishment in the cockpit he shouted, “We will show them”. The Red Bull’s will share the front row.

Alonso harrassed the fizzy drinks duo all session long and at the end was only fractionally off their pace and within striking range to make it two wins on the trot. He told BBC, “Qualifying has been good for us. To beat the Red Bulls was a difficult thing to do here. We just came to maximise our performance and third is a very good result. We’ll see in the race. It’s a long race.”

Jenson Button (McLaren Mercedes) had a good showing on the circuit where he won last year for Brawn GP. His team mate, Lewis Hamilton, is in the throes of a weekend he will want to forget as he failed to make it out of Q2 after his headline grabbing reckless driving shenanigans of the previous night.

Nico Rosberg again got the better of his illustrious Mercedes GP team mate Michael Schumacher, although the seven times world champion was looking stronger and more comfortable throughout the day. “It has been a little bit more fun but the traffic was quite tough. A couple of guys did not use their mirrors well,” said the 41 year old afterwards.

Best of the Cosworth runners again was Rubens Barrichello who will start from eighth spot on the grid. Again he got the better of his highly touted rookie team mate Nico Hulkenberg who was a Q2 victim, three quarters of a second down on his veteran team partner.

Robert Kubica (Renault) was ninth fastest with Adrian Sutil (Force India) rounding out the top ten.

Q2: Early shower for Hamilton as he misses out

Lewis Hamilton’s nightmarish Australian GP weekend went from bad to worse. After his headline grabbing reckless driving shenanigans the Briton failed to make it out of Q2. He will start the race from 11th on the grid.

Also failing to make the cut were Nico Hulkenberg in the Williams who could only manage 15th fastest. Force India’s Vitantonio Liuzzi was 15th. The session also provided an early shower for both Sauber and Toro Rosso drivers. Sebastien Buemi (12th), Pedro de la Rosa (14th), Kamui Kobayashi (16th) and Jaime Alguersuari (17th.)

Hamilton said to BBC, “It’s not really stressful, we’re just not in Q3. I struggled to get time in the last sector and when I put new tyres on I couldn’t get more out of them.”

At the top again it was Alonso and Webber setting the early pace before Vettel went half a second quicker than his team mate to end Q2 fastest of all.

Q1: Petrov fails but otherwise no big surprises

Qualifying got underway with ominous looking clouds hovering over Melbourne. Biggest scalp to go in Q1 was Vitaly Petrov who thrashed his Renault around in a desperate attempt to make it into Q2. Alas he failed but his attempt made for some good television. He will start the race from 18th on the grid.

As expected Lotus duo of Heikki Kovalainen (19th) and Jarno Trulli were quickest of the new team drivers albeit four seconds of the pace setters. Virgin racing pair of Timo Glock and Lucas di Grassi were next up in 21st and 22nd respectively, ahead of HRT’s Bruno Senna (23rd) and Karun Chandhok (24th).

At the top of the leader board Alonso and Webber slugged it out for top spot in the early stages until Vettel annexed the summit of the timing screens ahead of Rosberg, Button, Hamilton, Alonso, Webber and Schumacher.

One second covered the fastest eleven drivers, with the top 17 covered by less than two seconds.

Kovalainen was satisfied, “It was a decent effort, we got a good lap out of the car and the tyres. The target is to be ahead of the other new boys and we did that, the car is on schedule, there’s a lot of work to be done but I’ve had a good weekend.”

This report is being uodated on an ongoing basis…

Australian Grand Prix – Qualifying best lap times