Reigning champion Lewis Hamilton takes pole for the Australian Grand Prix after team-mate Valtteri Bottas crashes out of qualifying.
Lap times had been close in the first two parts of qualifying, but a stunning lap in the final moments of Q3 put Hamilton 0.6s ahead of the Ferrari of Kimi Raikkonen, awarding him his seventh pole in Melbourne.
Raikkonen will start alongside him on the front row of the grid, ahead of Sebastian Vettel and Max Verstappen. Daniel Ricciardo qualified fifth, but has been awarded a three-place grid penalty for not slowing sufficiently during a red flag in practice.
Bottas brought out the red flag at the start of Q3 when he ran into the wall at turn two. The Mercedes driver was able to walk away from the incident and has been cleared for the race tomorrow, but the car suffered significant damage. He’s set to start P10 but could be handed grid penalties if the car requires a gearbox change.
The red flag meant Romain Grosjean, Nico Hulkenberg and Carlos Sainz Jnr only managed a single flying lap in the final qualifying session. Grosjean finished sixth while Hulkenberg outqualified team-mate Sainz.
The McLarens narrowly missed out on the final qualifying session. Both Fernando Alonso and Stoffel Vandoorne put in scruffy laps at the end of Q2 which put them P11 and P12 for the first race of the season, but Alonso was happy with his effort.
Sergio Perez, Lance Stroll, and Esteban Ocon rounded out the top 15.
Brendon Hartley took 16th ahead of Marcus Ericsson, who briefly managed to put his Sauber P12 before improvements from others knocked him down the order.
Debutants Charles Leclerc and Sergey Sirotkin finished P18 and P19, with Pierre Gasly completing the order.
