Bottas 'blown away' by Mercedes pace in Melbourne

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Valterri Bottas had to accept second place on the grid once again after being beaten to pole position for the Australian Grand Prix by his Mercedes team mate by a little over a tenth of a second.

Hamilton had made a rare mistake on his first flying lap of Q3 which opened the door for the Finn to claim provisional pole.

But when it came to the chequered flag, Hamilton once again pulled out something special and left Bottas relegated to the shotgun spot for Sunday's race in Melbourne.

Emphatic Aussie front-row lock-out for Hamilton and Bottas!

“Of course I would prefer to be on pole, but the race is tomorrow and starting from the front row is good,” said the 29-year-old.

And Bottas was particularly impressed by how well Mercedes had performed overall. The pair were seven tenths faster than their nearest rival, Ferrari's Sebastian Vettel.

“I’m a little bit blown away by the team performance we had today,” Bottas admitted after the end of Saturday's session.

“Yesterday it was looking good, but it was only practice. Today it was the first sessions of the year that really counted, and I don’t think anyone in the team could imagine we would be in this position after the testing we had.

"Everyone in the team has been working so hard, and that made this possible," he added. "[But] this is only one session, tomorrow is the main day.”

Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff told Sky Sports F1 that he was impressed by how well Bottas had performed against such formidable competition from his team mate, who is an acknowledged master of Melbourne with eight career poles at Albert Park.

"He delivered," Wolff said of Bottas's best lap. "It's one of Lewis' favourite tracks, he's almost unbeatable here, and [Valtteri] was just a tenth off. Really great start for him."

Overall, Wolff was genuinely surprised by how far ahead they had ended up being in qualifying.

"After the tests it didn't look like this at all," he said, referring to the eight days of pre-season testing at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya at the end of February.

"The team did such a great job. Everybody really pulled [out] every bit we had.

"I'm a bit overwhelmed," he continued. "Unbelievable. Really unbelievable feeling. Now we have to keep both feet on the ground!

"It's a long race ahead, 58 laps. Reliability woes are always over us. There is always a risk," he cautioned.

"I'm feeling good. the long runs were really good, but we still need to keep it going," he said. "You need to get off the line as well.

"So let's not be too happy today. It's great, we can really be happy with qualifying, but the points are tomorrow.

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.