Australia Qualifying

Well well well... How interesting! Vettel in pole position. Hamilton's impressive 2nd place driving a wedge between the two Red Bull's and Webber qualifying in 3rd 0.8s behind his teammate.

Ferrari are in deep trouble with a generally poor overall performance. Massa drove badly and Alonso looked sour. No changes there.

On the other hand McLaren have done wonders to their car with the extra 2 weeks Bahrain's cancellation afforded them. General consensus was that they were up the creek in testing, but apparently they found a paddle, (an outboard motor and a jetpack) managing to transform their car into a really well running machine worthy of contesting the constructor's trophy.

Williams are not looking as hot as I anticipated. Barrichello starting from 17th after he span into the gravel trap by going for a bit of a wander into the grass during Q2 and cashcow Maldonado performed as well as a rookie would... I.e. Not well, but he still qualified higher than Barrichello in 15th.

In similar (basically identical) news, n00b Paul Di Resta outqualified Force India teammate and seasoned F1 driver Adrian Sutil after Sutil made the schoolboy error of opening up throttle, DRS and KERS while the back end had little grip, spinning his car violently and through extreme skill luck managing to recover.

Interestingly both Vettel and Hamilton posted their very quick times without the assistance of KERS, having coincidentally failed on both cars. The look of shock and fear on 4th place Button's face when he was told this information was priceless!

The first proper use of the new Pirellis went rather well. Most teams churning their way through their alloted tyres at an incredible rate. Ferrari went through all 3 of their softs and were still uncompetitive. The drivers and teams seem to have become accustomed to the nuances of the Italian tyres, although there were a few slip ups, the most common of which was exiting the pits with a little too much vigour when the rubber was still a touch cold. The tyres flat spot really easily, degrade in strips and its impossible to determine what compound they are from just glancing at them while the car is on track,  but they are very quick and if you can use them well they seem to go like thunder.

Let's see how tomorrow pans out. I pick Vettel 1st, Webber 2nd and Button 3rd (he did well with tyre strategy last year in Melbourne, I reckon he can do it again)