Lewis Hamilton showed just why he is favourite to win this year’s Formula One world championship when he won pole position for Sunday’s Australian Grand Prix.
It was his 32nd pole, drawing him level with another British champion, Nigel Mansell – and he is now just one behind two of the all time great drivers, Jim Clark and Alain Prost.
In a nail-biting finale to the first qualifying session under the radical new rules and regulations, pole was up in the air until the very end, with first Hamilton, then Mercedes team-mate Nico Rosberg, then Red Bull’s Daniel Ricciardo and finally Hamilton again toping the timings.
Alongside him on the front row will be local hero Ricciardo, a tremendous performance by him and Red Bull after all their difficulties in pre-season. But team-mate and four times world champion Sebastian Vettel had a miserable afternoon, failing to make it to Q3 for the first time since 2012.
Rosberg had to settle for third place in the end, one ahead of McLaren new boy Kevin Magnussen, with Fernando Alonso fifth.
Hamilton said: “It’s been an interesting weekend. It was so much harder in the wet conditions. It’s harder to drive these cars in the wet. It was a great showing for the team. There was a small hiccup on Friday morning but it was a quick fix. To get to the same number of poles as Nigel Mansell, who was one of the great British drivers, feels like a great achievement.”
Ricciardo said: “The weather added to the mix but it was very exciting. But this was just the start.”
Apart from Vettel, the other drivers not to make Q3 were Jenson Button, Kimi Raikkonen, who crashed his Ferrari at the very end of Q2, Adrian Sutil (Sauber), Sergio Perez (Force India) and Kamui Kobayashi (Caterham).
The big story in Q1 was that it claimed both Lotus drivers Romain Grosjean and Pastor Maldonado. Maldonado came off twice, not helped by the fact that rain started to fall 10 minutes into the session.
The other casualties at the first hurdle were the Marussia pair, Max Chilton and Jules Bianchi, Sauber’s Esteban Gutierrez and Caterham’s Marcus Ericsson.
But for Lotus, who beat McLaren to fourth place in last year’s constructors world championship, this was another desperate set-back following their difficulties in testing and with Friday’s opening practice sessions.
Grosjean, who qualified 21st, said afterwards: “We’re all very unhappy, but we will bounce back and learn and work. The guys were doing an amazing job [working through the night]. It’s been a painful first weekend but we will learn and make it better for the next race.”
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