World champion Vettel emerges fastest at Australian GP qualifying in new car named after pop singer Minogue
World champion Vettel emerges fastest at Australian GP qualifying in new car named after pop singer Minogue
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A day after christening his new Red Bull car Kinky Kylie ufffd after Australian pop princess Kylie Minogue ufffd defending championu00a0 Sebastian Vettel set a blistering qualifying lap time on Saturday to seize pole position for Red Bull for Sunday's season-opening Australian Formula One Grand Prix in Melbourne.
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| Red Bull's Sebastian Vettel (right) celebrates after taking pole position for Sunday's Australian Formula One GP at Albert Park in Melbourne while McLaren's Lewis Hamiton looks on. Pic/Getty Images |
Vettel's time was half a second faster than his pole-winning time in last year's Australian race and almost 0.8secs quicker than his nearest challenger Lewis Hamilton in a McLaren in Saturday's qualifying.
"The key for me tomorrow is to finish the race, see the chequered flag," said Vettel, who failed to finish last year's Australian GP despite posting the fastest qualifying time.
"I feel confident that we've had a very good preparation during the winter, we didn't suffer any reliability issues so the car was reliable from the outset and obviously not too slow. Things are looking good, but it's a hard race tomorrow with the new (regulation) tyres, it's like racing into the unknown, and we'll probably have more than one stop, so it will be quite entertaining for us as well."
It was Vettel's 16th career pole and comes after Red Bull posted 15 poles from 19 races in last year's world constructors' championship season.
Hamiltonu00a0stunned
Hamilton, the 2008 world champion, was astonished by the substantial eight-tenths of a second gap to Vettel, but was pleased with the strong improvement of his McLaren car from winter testing.
"The gap ufffd even if he (Vettel) didn't use KERS ufffdthat's another half-second, so it's 1.3secs, which is not normal," Hamilton said of the massive leeway in pace McLaren have to make up on Vettel's Red Bull. "At least we're in the fight and from there we can score points and continue to work on closing the gap."
Schumiu00a0 disappointed
Meanwhile, seven-time F1 world champion Michael Schumacher was disappointed after failing to finish in the top 10 of the qualifying here.
"From our testing experience, we were around the pace of Ferrari, however this did not translate today. It's not about that KERS only worked intermittently, or that I could probably have made it to Q3, but it is because our performance did not turn out as we expected," he said.
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