World champion Lewis Hamilton captured the first pole position of the Formula One season for the Australian Grand Prix in Melbourne on Saturday, but his fast start was eclipsed by controversy surrounding a new qualifying system.
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The new “live elimination” qualifying session, which was introduced to build more excitement and make it more uncertain, failed to excite in its first outing after Q2 and Q3 finished much ahead of time, with cars failing to go out in the last two minutes as they opted to save tyres following a single timed lap.
Several drivers have slammed the newly restructured Formula One qualifying format after a controversial debut at the season-opening Australian Grand Prix.
Lewis Hamilton headed team-mate Nico Rosberg to a one-two, with Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel 0.652 seconds adrift.
“I miss the old days when they went out and just run and run and run”.
The final qualifying session (Q3) was a bit of an anti-climax as only Mercedes sent out their drivers for a second run.
“We need to learn from it. The important things is not to stick our heads in the sand, address it properly first”.
Lewis Hamilton will start the defence of his world title from pole position after dominating qualifying for the Australian GP.
“Ultimately it is a good step that we tried something new but it’s trial and error”, he said.
“It was not so exciting for the fans to watch because of the cars sitting in the garages, but all my engineers said that was going to be the case. We know this vehicle has a lot of potential, so I think as a starting out, third and fourth, locking out the second row, is a good achievement”.
The top three qualifiers wasted little time in condemning the format as a “wrong” decision and bad for fans. “We didn’t put (on) a great show”, he said.
Red Bull’s Daniil Kvyat was the biggest victim of the new format, as he was eliminated during the first session.
But perhaps it was Toto Wolff who summed it up best, calling the new system “rubbish”.
Sebastian Vettel, who qualified P3, went for the “I told you so” approach after numerous drivers panned the idea before it even came into effect.
Hamilton felt F1 was right to experiment but that it was now clear the format was wrong.
Fernando Alonso and Jenson Button showed encouraging performance to set the 11th and 12th quickest times respectively for McLaren.
“So I think it’s too early…to see the real picture”.
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Bottas and Williams team-mate Felipe Massa struggled to get the tyres working early in FP3, but they made progress as the session went on, with Massa ninth and Force India’s Sergio Perez completing the top 10. Palmer just managed to knock Marcus Ericsson out with a last gasp lap at the flag, while Felipe Nasr, Romain Grosjean and Esteban Gutierrez all mis-timed their laps and were knocked out while they were on a quick lap.
