Lewis Hamilton started his title defence in glorious fashion to claim his first pole position of the season ahead of the Australian Grand Prix.

Hamilton set a time of 1:26.327, over half a second clear of his team mate Nico Rosberg with both drivers enjoying a good lead over their rivals.

Rosberg may have done better had he not needed to abort his provisional lap after running off onto the grass at the penultimate corner. Hamilton’s provisional time was at 1:26.419.

Rosberg then set his only lap time of the session to finish in second place while Hamilton stormed to a time 0.594 seconds  clear of his team mate.

Felipe Massa brought his Williams home in third place ahead of the two Ferraris of Sebastian Vettel and Kimi Raikkonen.

Valtteri Bottas struggled a little through Q3 and needed to abort his first lap. He went on to run wide at the end of his second lap and finished in sixth place. Bottas emerged from his Williams with an apparent injury of some sort to his back. Rob Smedley confirmed that he may have jarred his back a little and the Finn was seen limping off to the medical centre. There has been no further confirmation of the situation.

Australian home favourite, Daniel Ricciardo, has had a tough weekend all round but managed to get his Red Bull qualified in seventh place ahead of Toro Rosso rookie driver Carlos Sainz Jr.

The Lotus team managed to get both of their drivers through to Q3 and French driver Romain Grosjean finished ahead of Pastor Maldonado to round out the Top 10.

Felipe Nasr narrowly missed out on a slot in Q3 and will start ahead of F1’s youngest ever driver, Max Verstappen. Verstappen put in an impressive performance in Q1 but had a “big moment” in Turn 5 during Q2.

Daniil Kvyat faced a massive upward struggle during FP3 and despite seeming unlikely that he would even start his qualifying, he managed to post the 13th fastest time.

The Force India duo Nico Hulkenberg and Sergio Perez came in next followed by the Q1 drop outs Marcus Ericsson, and the McLaren drivers Jenson Button and Kevin Magnussen.

The McLarens were excrutiatingly slow with Button finishing almost 3 seconds off the pace. The big expectations for the McLaren Honda partnership have left many fans very disappointed and desperately worried about what is going on with the MP4-30.

The Manor Marussia team will not be allowed to take part in the race after failing to get their cars onto the track this weekend.

Photo Credit: Mercedes AMG Petronas

Lap Time sheets below: