It was a theme which continued into the final timed session and one that the strategists had feared with teams opting to save their tyres for Sunday’s race rather than post a quick lap.
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The revamped qualifying petered out with Sebastian Vettel, Kimi Raikkonen and Nico Rosberg not bothering to improve their times against the rampant Lewis Hamilton in the final minutes, bringing matters to a premature halt.
Despite eventually finishing third behind Lewis Hamilton as well, he believes the team are in a good position for the season.
It’s incredible to see that because the risk is always when you’re dominating that you start to become complacent and that’s a big risk always, everybody has experienced that, but it seems that we’re able to push through and so that’s really awesome.
Wolff added: “I think a shoot-out is an exciting format as long as you are capable of transmitting it in the right way on TV”.
“All my engineers were saying it would be the case, they told the FIA but they ignored them. For me it proved how smart my engineers are, although I knew that anyway”.
The decision to ditch it is likely to be greeted with approval by fans who expressed their angst on social media after Saturday’s qualifying session. We all said what was going to happen.
The 2016 Formula 1 Racing season gets underway on Sunday with the Australian Grand Prix.
Eric Boullier, the chief of McLaren-Honda, said: “Like many of my opposite numbers within other teams, on behalf of our sport, I have to say I’m saddened that the new qualifying format produced such a lacklustre spectacle”.
And when that came the first out was Manor’s Pascal Wehrlein, followed 90 seconds later by team-mate Rio Haryanto. He closed on Hamilton for second in the closing laps, but ran wide at the penultimate corner with two laps remaining to consign him to third place.
Red Bull’s Russian driver Daniil Kvyat was the first major casualty of the qualifying shoot-out when he missed out in the first cut.
Renault rookie Jolyon Palmer snuck into Q2 after the clock had run down on the first 16-minute session with a last flying lap that tipped Sauber’s Marcus Ericsson out.
Valtteri Bottas was a disappointing 11th for Williams, just ahead of the McLarens of Fernando Alonso and Jenson Button.
Toro Rosso’s Carlos Sainz is seventh on the grid, with Daniel Ricciardo eighth.
Hamilton wishes he and Vettel could have had a closer fight.
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Hamilton scorched the tarmac at the Albert Park circuit with a lap of 1m23.837s which was 0.360s faster than the lap set by his Mercedes teammate Nico Rosberg.
