Hamilton storms to pole as Mercedes dominates

Lewis Hamilton took pole position for the Australian Grand Prix as Mercedes dominated in the opening qualifying session of the season.

Hamilton’s first run was enough to give him a 1.3s advantage over the field as team-mate Nico Rosberg ran wide at the penultimate corner and aborted his lap. While Rosberg put in a a solid final lap to start second, he was 0.6s slower than Hamilton who went even quicker with a late effort.

Felipe Massa took third place but he was almost 1.4s off the pace as Mercedes started 2015 with an even bigger advantage to the one it enjoyed last year. Massa pipped Sebastian Vettel to best of the rest, with just 0.072s covering Massa, Vettel and the second Ferrari of Kimi Raikkonen.

Valtteri Bottas had to settle for sixth after running wide at the final corner and saving a big slide, while Daniel Ricciardo saved some face for Red Bull with seventh ahead of the Toro Rosso of Carlos Sainz Jr, although both were over two seconds slower than Hamilton. The two Lotus drivers of Romain Grosjean and Pastor Maldonado completed the top ten.

Q2 saw a tight battle for the final places in the top ten as less than 0.3s covered seventh to 12th. An impressive lap from Felipe Nasr almost managed to get the Sauber in to Q3, but Maldonado dropped the Brazilian down to 11th by less than 0.1s.

Max Verstappen failed to join his team-mate in the final part of qualifying having looked strong throughout the day, with replays showing a big moment for the 17-year-old exiting Turn 4 which ruined his final flying lap. Behind them, Daniil Kvyat dropped out as Red Bull’s struggles continued, with the two Force India’s the slowest cars in Q2 and separated by just 0.001s.

Neither Manor managed to get out on track at all throughout the weekend, leaving the remaining 18 drivers fighting to avoid being in the bottom three above Will Stevens and Roberto Merhi in Q1. With McLaren still so far off the pace it was a private battle between Jenson Button and Kevin Magnussen to avoid starting last, which Button won by 0.6s but the two MP4-30s will still make up the back row of the grid.

Marcus Ericsson was the other driver to drop out in the first part of qualifying as he failed to get his lap together on soft tyres following a difficult weekend for Sauber, with confirmation that it would retain its driver line-up for the race only coming on Saturday morning.

The Mercedes pace was clearly evident in Q1, with Hamilton and Rosberg comfortably fastest despite not using the soft tyre, with Bottas the only other driver to do the same.

Click here for Saturday's gallery from the Australian Grand Prix

Keep up to date with all the F1 news via Facebook and Twitter