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Lewis Hamilton claimed his fifth consecutive Australian Grand Prix pole position and a sixth in his career, following a blistering lap in Q3 which separated the Briton from his nearest rival by over half a second.
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The rehearsals are done, and it is now time for the drivers to race the clock, as we get set for the first qualifying session of the 2018 Formula One season. Join The Roar for live updates and a blog from 5pm AEDT.
Whatever lap times and pace seen during the Friday practice sessions can almost be discarded for qualifying, with a dramatic change in weather set to affect the remainder of the weekend’s proceedings.
4-10mm of rain is forecast for Saturday afternoon, with a 90 per cent chance of showers on the horizon. That’ll make for a wet and wild qualifying – something that is familiar to Albert Park in the past.
For those unfamiliar to how qualifying works in Formula One, it is a one-hour session split into three knockout stages to determine the grid for Sunday’s 58 lap grand prix.
18-minutes in Q1 will eliminate the bottom five drivers, before the 15-minute Q2 will filter the next five slowest drivers out. Q3 is as 12-minute shootout amongst the remaining ten drivers for that coveted pole position.
Drivers who qualify inside the top-ten are required to start the race on Sunday, on the tyres that they had used to set their fastest laps on during Q2.
Pole position is a familiar place for reigning world champion Lewis Hamilton in Melbourne, with the Briton having claimed a total of five in his career – including the last four consecutive.
Behind him on Albert Park poles is his 2017 title rival Sebastian Vettel, who collected three in his time at Red Bull.
Ferrari have not been on pole in Melbourne for more than a decade now, with their last coming back in 2007 at the hands of Kimi Räikkönen – who will be lining up alongside Hamilton and Vettel as the only multiple race winners on the grid.
Though with a wet qualifying forecast, the top spot is anyone’s guess and there is the potential now for a surprise result, with the likes of Ferrari or Red Bull in the mix to snap Mercedes AMG’s streak of poles in Australia.
The possibility of starting his home grand prix on pole is there for Daniel Ricciardo, who has only one pole position to his name through his career. Teammate Max Verstappen will equally have that opportunity also.
Tune into the live blog coverage of qualifying here on The Roar from 5pm AEDT, to see what the grid will look like for the Australian Grand Prix.
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