As expected Mercedes claim Pole Position for the season opener

Totally as expected it was a Mercedes driver who claimed Pole Position for the first Formula 1 race of the season in Melbourne.

In fact it was a Mercedes-only front row since Brit Lewis Hamilton took his career,s Pole number 50 ahead of teammate Nico Rosberg.

Ferrari settled for 3rd and 4th places with Sebastian Vettel and Kimi Räikkönen respectively.

The big surprise of the qualifying was Haas F1, who showed good speed but didn’t get the timing in the new qualifying system, where a driver gets eliminated every 90 seconds. Esteban Gutierrez actually did 7th fastest time in Q1 at the time, but since his time had run out, the time didn’t count and he had to settle for 20th position – right behind his teammate Romain Grosjean who got hit by the same error from the team.

Photo: Mercedes AMG

There was a bit of a surprise at Renault when Jolyon Palmer qualified ahead of teammate Kevin Magnussen. But the times were so close to each other, and with limited dry weather running this weekend, it’s all in the details about who will be in front.

The negative thing in qualifying was Daniil Kvyat for Red Bull. He only qualified a disappointing 18th while teammate Daniel Ricciardo will start 10 places further up the grid.

The race will start tomorrow at 6.00 CET.

The full qualifying result can be found here.

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