Lewis Hamilton wins pole for Australian Grand Prix
Reigning world champion Lewis Hamilton has captured pole for the Australian Grand Prix after a dominant show of power in qualifying by Mercedes.
Hamilton recorded a blistering lap of one minute, 26.327 seconds on Saturday in Melbourne ahead of Sunday's season-opening race.
He'll be followed by teammate and rival Nico Rosberg, who managed a last-gasp 1:26.921 despite running wide into the grass and needing a brief pitstop.
Just like last year, it may be a race for third place Sunday. Hamilton's time was a full second quicker than third-place Felipe Massa of Williams.
Ferrari, meanwhile, had reason to celebrate with a far better start to their season than their plodding performances of 2014.
Sebastian Vettel looked good in his debut with the team at fourth place while teammate Kimi Raikkonen qualified fifth.
Valtteri Bottas of Williams starts sixth, Red Bull's Daniel Ricciardo was seventh and Toro Rosso rookie Carlos Sainz Jr. surprised with an eighth-place result.
Lotus will also be optimistic they've taken a step forward following ninth and 10th-place finishes for Romain Grosjean and Pastor Maldonado, respectively.
It quickly became clear which teams had and could harness their Mercedes engines, and which weren't.
Red Bull and its Renault engine struggled throughout the day. Ricciardo barely made it into the shootout. Daniil Kvyat meanwhile will start a disappointing 13th in his debut with the team.
Kvyat actually performed worse than Toro Rosso's Max Verstappen. Now the youngest driver to ever compete in F1 at just 17 years old, Verstappen settled for 12th place.
That will be an embarrassment for Red Bull, which uses Toro Rosso as a development team for young talent.
McLaren's disastrous start to the season continued with a timid qualifying performance. Both Jenson Button and Kevin Magnussen will start at the back of the grid after finishing an ugly two-to-three seconds off the pace with the new Honda engine.
It's the first time both McLaren cars were knocked out in the first round of qualifying since 2009.
Manor Marussia never even got on the track. The team, which missed the final three races of last season as it went into administration before being later saved by OVO Energy Stephen Fitzpatrick, failed to get the car out of the pits.
That wasn't surprising. Manor Marussia is using a modified 2014 car that never participated in preseason testing. The team isn't expected to finish higher than the back of the grid whenever they finally participate in a race.