Dominant Hamilton snatches Australian Grand Prix pole

MELBOURNE: Mercedes’ world champion Lewis Hamilton picked up where he left off last year to reassert his authority and snatch a record-extending eighth pole position at the season-opening Australian Grand Prix on Saturday.The Briton clocked a fastest lap of one minute 20.486 to narrowly pip team-mate Valtteri Bottas, with Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel third, but a massive 0.704 seconds behind his arch-rival.

The German will start on the second row with Red Bull’s Max Verstappen while Ferrari newcomer Charles Leclerc and Haas’ Romain Grosjean make up row three.

Fellow Haas driver Kevin Magnussen is behind them alongside British young gun Lando Norris, who steered his McLaren to an admirable eighth in his debut qualifying session.

Hamilton, 34, is the pole master in Melbourne, claiming it eight times and every year since 2014, although he has only twice won a race at Albert Park, in 2008 and 2015.

He knocked out his rivals with a blistering lap at the death to claim an 84th career grid-leading time and said afterwards he was "shaking, it was so close out there".

Hamilton, who is bidding for a sixth world title to move within one of Michael Schumacher’s record seven, had complained after pre-season testing in Barcelona that Ferrari was much quicker.

But this has proved to be a fallacy with the Briton fastest in all three free practice sessions.

"Coming from Barcelona, we have made some really big steps in the past few days with the setup. And it seems to have worked," he said.

Vettel, who has won the last two races in Melbourne, admitted he too was surprised at the size of the gap with Mercedes.

"I think everybody is, probably even themselves," he said.

"For sure there is some homework for us to understand, but I still think we have a great car, we should be better than this. We have 58 laps tomorrow to get a proper read on where we are.”