World champion Sebastian Vettel set a blistering qualifying lap time yesterday to seize pole position for Red Bull for today’s season-opening Australian Formula One Grand Prix in Melbourne.
The 23-year-old German, who became the youngest world champion last season, blew away his rivals and left team-mate Mark Webber shaking his head with a best lap time of one minute 23.529 seconds.
Vettel’s time was half a second faster than his pole-winning time in last year’s Australian race and almost 0.8secs quicker than his nearest challenger Lewis Hamilton in a McLaren in Saturday’s qualifying.
Vettel also revealed that he did not use the extra power boost during qualifying.
“The key for me tomorrow is to finish the race, see the chequered flag,” said Vettel, who failed to finish last year’s Australian GP despite posting the fastest qualifying time.
“I feel confident that we’ve had a very good preparation during the winter, we didn’t suffer any reliability issues so the car was reliable from the outset and obviously not too slow.
“Things are looking good, but it’s a hard race tomorrow with the new (regulation) tyres, it’s like racing into the unknown, and we’ll probably have more than one stop, so it will be quite entertaining for us as well.”
It was Vettel’s 16th career pole and comes after Red Bull posted 15 poles from 19 races in last year’s world constructors’ championship season.
“It’s quite promising for Sunday (today) and surely we have done the first step and starting the season that way is what you want to and it’s just a good sign for all of us in the team,” Vettel said.
“It was quite a pleasure today and I am very happy with the result, but we have zero points just like everybody else so we’ll have to see tomorrow.”
Hamilton, the 2008 world champion, was astonished by the substantial eight-tenths of a second gap to Vettel, but was pleased with the strong improvement of his McLaren car from winter testing.
“The gap – even if he (Vettel) didn’t use KERS – that’s another half-second, so it’s 1.3secs, which is not normal,” Hamilton said.
“At least we’re in the fight and from there we can score good points and continue to work on our reliability and work on closing the gap, of course it’s going to be very tough, it’s a big gap to fill.
“I am absolutely thrilled to be on the front row of the grid, the guys back at the factory have done an unbelievable job and we’ve taken a massive step this weekend with the cars.”
Webber, yearning to win his home GP at his 10th attempt, was disappointed to have lost a front row spot on the grid to Hamilton’s late run.
“I couldn’t do the times today and I was disappointed with my performance and Seb obviously put in a very good lap and I am disappointed to have been bumped off the front row as well,” Webber said.
“I tried my best, but I am a little mystified to the gap to Seb to be honest and I will have to go through it and see where I can improve.
“A credit to the team, it’s not the best day for me but the bar is high and I would have liked to have done better.”
Hamilton’s team-mate Jenson Button, bidding for a hat-trick of Australian victories today, will start outside Webber on the second row.
Ferrari’s Fernando Alonso was fifth fastest and will have to work his way from the third row of the grid, while seven-time world champion Michael Schumacher missed the cut for the third and final qualifying sector with the 11th best time.
Today’s grid
1. Vettel (Red Bull) - 1:23.529
2. Hamilton (McLaren) - 1:24.307
3. Webber (Red Bull) - 1:24.395
4. Button (McLaren) - 1:24.779
5. Alonso (Ferrari) - 1:24.974
6. Petrov (Renault) - 1:25.247
7. Rosberg (Mercedes) - 1:25.421
8. Massa (Ferrari) - 1:25.599
9. Kobayashi (Sauber) - 1:25.626
10. Buemi (Toro Rosso) - 1:27.066
11. Schumacher (Mercedes) - 1:25.971
12. Alguersuari (Toro Rosso) - 1:26.103
13. Perez (Sauber) - 1:26.108
14. Di Resta (Force India) - 1:26.739
15. Maldonado (Williams) - 1:26.768
16. Sutil (Force India) - 1:31.407
17. Barrichello (Williams) - NT
18. Heidfeld (Renault) - 1:27.239
19. Kovalainen (Lotus) - 1:29.254
20. Trulli (Lotus) - 1:29.342
21. Glock (Virgin) - 1:29.858
22. D’Ambrosio (Virgin) - 1:30.822
23. Liuzzi (Hispania) - 1:32.978
24. Karthikeyan (Hispania) - 1:34.293