Nico Rosberg continued where he left off by taking out the first grand prix of the 2016 Formula One season.
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After getting to within three tenths of a second of Hamilton in final practice, Vettel finished qualifying eight tenths down on the champion in qualifying, though the deficit was surely aided by Vettel’s decision to back out of unnecessary running in the final stages of the session when elimination was imminent.
The German’s time was a half-second faster than the 2015 race pole time, although on supersoft tires, but also indicating the improvement in Ferrari heading into the first race of the season.
The Ferrari’s, meanwhile, chose to remain on the super-soft compound tyres, which Vettel admitted was a “mistake” during his post-race interview on the podium, as they had to stop again leaving him too much ground to make up on the two Mercedes cars.
Nico Rosberg secured a Silver Arrows front row lockout with his final lap in Q3 to leap ahead of both Ferraris after Scuderia pair Sebastian Vettel and Kimi Raikkonen sat out the final five minutes.
Vettel appeared poised for an unlikely win but the race turned on its head when Alonso crashed into Haas driver Esteban Gutierrez at high speed going into turn three of the 18th lap.
Following Saturday’s qualifying, drivers Lewis Hamilton and Sebastian Vettel both lashed out at the new format, with Vettel even joking that he had “time to get changed” before facing the press, while Hamilton said the drivers and team engineers had been vocal about the change during testing.
Under the new system, the slowest drivers were knocked out of qualifying in rolling eliminations every 90 seconds.
The first race of the new season gets under way on Sunday at 05:00 GMT, with coverage on radio 5 live from 04:00 GMT and online from 03:30. Now we saw and I don’t think it was very exciting.
And despite a new F1 qualifying system for the Melbourne race, that’s exactly what happened, with Hamilton easily the quickest and looking able to do more.
“He just had a great day and my day wasn’t so great”, said Rosberg.
“Of course, not happy with second place but still a lot of opportunities for tomorrow starting from second”. “I would prefer to go back to the qualifying sessions we had but that is my personal opinion”.
The points finishers were: Rosberg, Hamilton, Vettel, Ricciardo, Massa, Grosjean, Hulkenberg, Bottas, Sainz, Verstappen.
New team Haas, the first American-owned F1 outfit to race in 30 years, celebrated points on debut, with Frenchman Romain Grosjean finishing sixth behind Red Bull’s fourth-placed Daniel Ricciardo and Felipe Massa in a Williams.
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“I did the best I could after a hard start – damage limitation really”, Hamilton said.
