There was just no stopping F1's reigning World Champion Sebastian Vettel as the German picked up where he left off last season, claiming pole in Australia.
Vettel took pole position at Albert Park in a dominant display that left the other teams and his team-mate trailing. McLaren were the best of the rest with a strong performance from Lewis Hamilton who finished P2 ahead of Mark Webber and Jenson Button.
Fernando Alonso and Felipe Massa managed P5 and P8 for Ferrari, but Michael Schumacher failed to make Q3 while team-mate Nico Rosberg took P7. Performance of the day came from Vitaly Petrov who put his Renault into P6.
Qualifying 1
With the ambient te,mperature as low as 16C and the trackl at just 18C Vitaly Petrov set the 2011 World Championship in action as his Renault headed out onto the Albert Park circuit for the first lap of Q1. He duly set the P1 time at 1:29.463, while Paul Di Resta was not far off in the Force India at 1:29.779.
The whole proceedings were interrupted by the Hispania team who had completed just six laps in morning practice. As BBC commentator David Coulthard said it was outrageous that HRT should be using a qualifying session to shake down their cars but that was the reality. Neither Narain Karthikeyan or Tonio Liuzzi looked like qualifying inside 107% but they did at least set some mildly competitive laps by the end.
Heikki Kovalainen was next up in P1 with a 1:29.254, followed by Nick Heidfeld 1:28.613, team-mate Vitaly Petrov 1:27.396 and then Sebastian Vettel showed what could be done on a set off hard tyres with a 1:26.657.
In the first session the front-runners, Red Bull, McLaren, Ferrari and Mercedes all started on the hard tyre. Having set benchmark times they looked to whittle them down further. Mark Webber snatched P1 with a 1:25.900, Vettel took it back with a 1:25.515, then Lewis Hamilton took P1 with a 1:25.384 only to see Vettel take it back with a 1:25.296.
The Red Bulls and McLarens looked to be the class of the field with Ferrari and Mercedes struggling to make the tyre work. Because the slower teams jumped to the soft tyre straight away that put these slow runners in jeopardy because they had to follow suit. Michael Schumacher and the two Ferraris went onto soft tyre as they found themselves back in P11 and P12 in the dying minutes of the session.
With three minutes left to go it was the new teams firmly in the bottom six with Paul Di Resta's Force India in P.18. Di Resta hauled his car up to P16 which then put Massa in P17 and Fernando Alonso was only just below him in P15. Armed with the soft tyres Alonso managed to jump up to P3. Nick Heidfeld was now in the exit seat and he couldn't get the car round any quicker and stayed P.18.
So out went
18. Heidfeld
19. Kovalainen
20. Trulli
21. Glock
22. D'Ambrosio
23. Liuzzi
24. Karthikeyan
Virgin will have been relieved to finish within 107% but both HRT cars failed to break that barrier and it is unlikely the big teams will want them to use the race as a test, especially with bits falling off the cars. Disappointment of the session will have been Nick Heidfeld who saw his team-mate put the other Renault in third in Q1.
Qualifying 2
Sebastien Buemi set the P1 time with a none-too-shabby 1:26.053. With only two and half minutes gone Rubens Barrichello was already claiming P17 after he put a wheel onto the grass in the braking zone for Turn 3 and went straight on into the gravel. This immediately changed the plans of the Red Bull drivers who had gone out on soft tyres and couldn't use them at their best and so returned to the pits.
Not so for Lewis Hamilton who had another set of hard tyres on and was able to cruise past Rubens' stricken Williams as it was recovered, before going on to set the timing screens to purple with a P1 of 1:25.522. Hamilton's time was despite the most horrendous flat-spot as he locked his tyres into a right-hand turn.
Team-mate Jenson Button had opted for the softer tyre and took over the P1 slot with a 1:24.957. However the McLaren pace was put into context by Sebastian Vettel who was almost a second quicker with a 1:24.090.
It was in this session that Red Bull showed exactly how far they were in front of the rest. Behind the Red Bulls and McLarens the Ferraris weren't having that scary a time of it in Q2 now that everyone was starting to run on soft tyres and there were less mobile chicanes on the course.
Running into the final few minutes both Force Indias and both Williams looked unlikely to make it into Q3, but both Saubers and both Toro Rossos looked like they had chances. The two Mercedes should have been in there but Michael Schumacher could only put his Mercedes W02 into P11 on the first lap on his soft tyres. What was interesting was that he managed to make them last another lap for one final try.
Adrian Sutil tried vainly to get to grips with his DRS wing and opened it too early on the straight sending his car into a massive 360 spin but hitting no-one (his qualifying now over). Team-mate Di Resta jumped to P14 but not nearly enough. Kobayashi made it to a fantastic P6 while Nico Rosberg's P8 was a relief for Ross Brawn's team.
Round Schumacher came for his final attempt to get into Q3 but although he set a faster, Personal Best time, he stayed P11, after losing time in the final two turns. He ended up behind Rosberg and most surprisingly, Buemi and Kobayashi.
So out went
11. Schumacher
12. Alguersuari
13. Perez
14. DiResta
15. Maldonado
16. Sutil
17. Barrichello
Qualifying 3
The interesting aspect of Q3 was the strategy call for tyres. With cars starting on the tyres with which they set the fastest lap (not the last set) the teams' race strategy would be revealed by the tyres they chose for qualifying. Surprisingly all seemed to go for the yellow-walled soft tyres. This put Ferrari at a disadvantage with only one set left and so it was the two Mclarens first out of the pitlane followed by the two Red Bulls, both with the luxury of two runs.
Lewis Hamilton set provisional pole with a 1:24.501 with Button slotting into P2 three tenths behind. This was eclipsed by Sebastian Vettel with a 1:23.529. Although Mark Webber claimed P2, demoting Hamilton and Button to P3 and P4, he was only just ahead of the leading McLaren.
Fernando Alonso came out to challenge and had a disastrous opening tour that only put him P8 (out of 8) but he got his tyres to work on the second lap and his car up into P5, displacing Rosberg, Kobayashi and Buemi. However he didn't fare as badly as Felipe Massa who put his Ferrari 150 into a spin at Turn 1.
Vettel went out again but could go no quicker, while Lewis Hamilton, despite a KERS failure closed the gap to around 0.8 of a second and grab P2 in the process.
Vettel was typically upbeat with his performance, the big surprise being the revelation that he hadn't used KERS at all through his pole lap and the fact that he was so far in front of team-mate Mark Webber. In the closing seconds of the session Vitaly Petrov put his car in an amazing P6 while Massa stuck his Ferrari ahead of Kobayashi in P8 and Rosberg improved to P7.
It had been a dramatic three sessions with Red Bull reinforcing their testing dominance, Mclaren making the most remarkable recovery from gloomy pre-race predictions and Ferrari and Mercedes under-performing. No-one would have predicted a Sauber, a Toro Rosso and a Renault in Q3. With drivers admitting that the race Pirellis appear to be different from their testing Pirellis, it remains to be seen if the race will unfold with quite the drama that was expected of it.
FH
Times
01. Sebastian Vettel, Germany, Red Bull, 1:23.529
2. Lewis Hamilton, Britain, McLaren, 1:24.307
3. Mark Webber, Australia, Red Bull, 1:24.395
4. Jenson Button, Britain, McLaren, 1:24.799
5. Fernando Alonso, Spain, Ferrari, 1:24.974
6. Vitaly Petrov, Russia, Renault, 1:25.247
7. Nico Rosberg, Germany, Mercedes, 1:25.421
8. Felipe Massa, Brazil, Ferrari, 1:25.599
9. Kamui Kobayashi, Japan, Sauber, 1:25.626
10. Sebastien Buemi, Switzerland, Toro Rosso, 1:27.066
Eliminated after second session
11. Michael Schumacher, Germany, Mercedes, 1:25.971
12. Jaime Alguersuari, Spain, Toro Rosso, 1:26.103
13. Sergio Perez, Mexico, Sauber, 1:26.108
14. Paul Di Resta, Britain, Force India, 1:26.739
15. Pastor Maldonado, Venezuela, Williams, 1:26.768
16. Adrian Sutil, Germany, Force India, 1:31.407
17. Rubens Barrichello, Brazil, Williams, no time set
Eliminated after first session
18. Nick Heidfeld, Germany, Renault, 1:27.239
19. Heikki Kovalainen, Finland, Lotus, 1:29.254
20. Jarno Trulli, Italy, Lotus, 1:29.342
21. Timo Glock, Germany, Virgin, 1:29.858
22. Jerome d'Ambrosio, Belgium, Virgin, 1:30.822
23. Vitantonio Liuzzi, Italy, Hispania, 1:32.978
24. Narain Karthikeyan, India, Hispania, 1:34.293
