Lewis Hamilton swept to his first pole position for Mercedes at the Chinese Formula One Grand Prix yesterday, with Kimi Raikkonen, of Lotus, lining up alongside and Red Bull well down the starting grid.

In only his third race for the team he joined at the end of last season from McLaren, 2008 world champion Hamilton celebrated the 27th pole of his career at a circuit where he has won twice before.

Ferrari’s Fernando Alonso will start third, with Red Bull’s Sebastian Vettel ninth and his team-mate Mark Webber starting from the back of the grid due to a fuel problem.

“Today is such a blessing to be here up front because it (the move to Mercedes) was such a change for me,” Hamilton, last on pole with McLaren at the 2012 Brazilian season-ender, told reporters.

Mercedes, uncompetitive for most of last season, were last on pole a year ago at the same race with eventual winner Nico Rosberg. The German qualified fourth this time.

Alonso will start ahead of Felipe Massa for the first time this season, denying the Brazilian the honour of being the first team-mate to out-qualify the Spaniard for five consecutive races.

“The biggest threat could come from Raikkonen as the Lotus has shown it manages its tyres well,” said Alonso.

Massa will start fifth with Romain Grosjean sixth for Lotus.

Webber, barely speaking to Vettel after the German defied team orders in Malaysia and passed him to win, was sidelined by a fuel problem during the second phase of qualifying.

The Australian was 14th fastest but was sent to the back of the grid for having insufficient fuel in the car to drive it back to the pits and provide a mandatory one litre sample.

The governing FIA said in a statement that there was only 150ml left in the tank.

“The amount of fuel that was required to be put into the car from the fuel rig was not fully delivered.

“This was due to an error with the fuel bowser that meant it under delivered 3kg of fuel,” said team principal Christian Horner yesterday.

Webber, who had feared a “double-whammy”, put a brave face on his situation and agreed it was “not the optimum starting position”.

McLaren’s Jenson Button, whose car was off the pace in the first two races, found himself in the unexpected position of starting ahead of both Red Bulls in eighth place and on the harder tyre.

“This was the best we could do with what we have,” he said.

“We don’t really have the pace of the front-running cars yet.”

Today’s grid in Shanghai

Note: Webber sent to back of grid for fuel rules infringement.