Button leads Brawn front row sweep

Briton Jenson Button seized pole position for the season-opening Australian Grand Prix yesterday in a fairytale front row sweep for his new Brawn GP team.

Brazilian team-mate Rubens Barrichello will line up alongside Button in today's race in a remarkable turnaround for a team who were fighting for their Formula One survival earlier this year.

The pole was Button's first in Formula One since the 2006 Australian Grand Prix, when he was driving for now-departed Honda.

Mercedes-engined Brawn, who have emerged phoenix-like from the ashes of Honda, will be the first to start their debut race on pole position since the March team in the 1970 South African Grand Prix.

It will also be the first time in 38 races the field will line up without either a Ferrari or a McLaren on the front row.

Button, a race winner for Honda in 2006, scored only three points in 18 races last year and his career looked to be heading for the scrapheap when Honda announced in December that they were pulling out due to the credit crunch.

"The last five or six months for both of us have been so tough," said Button. "Going from not having a drive or any future in racing to putting it on pole here is just amazing, it really is.

"This is where we deserve to be I think after the tough times we've had."

Barrichello agreed, with a smile that lit up the post-qualifying news conference.

"Everyone who has touched this car needs a credit because it's a really great car," said the Brazilian, whose car was two kilos heavier on fuel than Button's according to figures released by the governing FIA.

McLaren's Lewis Hamilton, in his first race as Formula One's youngest champion, will start 18th after a gearbox failure kept him in the garage from the end of the first session.

Under Formula One regulations, gearboxes must last four successive races with a five-place penalty on the starting grid for any unshceduled changes.

Toyota penalised

The 24-year-old would have been last but he moved up two places when stewards excluded Toyota's Jarno Trulli and Timo Glock from the classification after ruling that their cars' rear wings were too flexible.

Glock had been sixth with Trulli eighth.

Hamilton won from pole position last year but is now facing his lowest start.

"I don't really have a game plan," he said. "I'll just go for it."

His Finnish team-mate Heikki Kovalainen, who will be starting in a far heavier car, lines up 12th on a grid turned upside down by the sport's radical new regulations.

Ferrari's Brazilian Felipe Massa, last year's overall runner-up, will start sixth with 2007 champion Kimi Raikkonen seventh after the Toyota drivers' exclusion.

"The difference between third and myself is quite small ... but it was a big difference to the guys in front," said Massa.

"If they (Brawn) carry on like that they will win the championship in the middle of the year."