Lewis Hamilton led a McLaren front row lockout in qualifying for the second time in the space of a week. In an exciting finish to the qualifying session, it was a mad dash to determine the final starting order for Sunday. It was Lewis Hamilton though who pulled one out of the bag and took pole despite a last gasp Button effort. Michael Schumacher was superb in qualifying 3^rd ahead of Mark Webber who qualified ahead of his teammate Sebastian Vettel. The Red Bull’s were split by flying Finn Kimi Raikkonen in 5^th place. Raikkonen however will only start in 10th courtesy a 5 place grid penalty due to a gearbox change. 

The real disappointments for the day were definitely Rosberg in the Mercedes that should really have been placed higher and the Ferrari that once again punched under its weight. Alonso finished in 9^th in the best that the most successful & storied F1 team in history could manage. Grosjean for the second race in succession finished in the top 10 while Sergio Perez brought up the rear of Q1 in 10^th place.

Putting the last week's disappointment of not qualifying for the season opening Australian GP behind him, Indian driver Narain Karthikeyan looked in good shape to make it to the grid for Sunday's Malaysian Grand Prix, round two of the 2012 FIA Formula 1 championship. Piloting the HRT F112, Karthikeyan completed a significant amount of mileage during the two free practice sessions today despite being side-lined by a technical issue after just eight laps in the first session.

"In the morning session we had a few reliability issues, the same as in Melbourne but the magnitude was thankfully far lower. There were some cooling issues as well, which was expected since the ambient temperatures were high", he elaborated.

Lotus F1 Team kicked off the 2012 Formula 1 season with a day of mixed emotions in Melbourne. Kimi Räikkönen mounted a superb comeback charge, slicing through the field from his P18 grid slot to finish well inside the points in 7th. At the other end of the scale, Romain Grosjean’s fairytale weekend came to a cruel end on only the 3rd lap after contact forced him to retire. 

Romain’s retirement was caused by a collision with Pastor Maldonado at turn 13, where the Williams driver made contact with his right front wheel, breaking the steering. In amazing contrast, Kimi started the race’s final lap in P10 and finished it in P7.

A strong weekend in Melbourne came to a disappointing end for the MERCEDES AMG PETRONAS team today with Nico Rosberg finishing the Australian Grand Prix in 12th place and team-mate Michael Schumacher retiring. Both drivers had excellent starts with Michael making up one place to third, and Nico moving from seventh to fourth.

Michael was still running in third position when a gearbox problem forced him to retire the car on lap 11. Nico ran a two-stop race with an option/option/prime tyre strategy, stopping on laps 12 and 31. He would have finished in the points before a clash with Perez on the last lap dropped him to back to 12th place.

Sahara Force India picked up a point in the season-opening Australian Grand Prix as Paul Di Resta grabbed the final point in a dramatic last corner squabble. Team-mate Nico Hulkenberg was an innocent victim of the first lap carnage as he was hit from behind, which damaged the rear suspension and led to an early retirement.

Paul di Resta (P10): “It’s always nice to start the season with a point, but it was not looking too promising until the last few laps when my engineer told me that I was catching the cars ahead of me. Fortunately I had saved quite a bit of KERS for the last corner, which helped me get a good run on Vergne and beat him to the line for tenth. So it was a pretty exciting final lap. It’s a good way to start the season, but it’s clear we have a lot of work to do because we were struggling for pace at the start of each stint, which hurt my overall race pace. Even so, considering where I started and the weekend we’ve had, I don’t think I can be disappointed to have come away with a point.”

Jenson Button took a superb victory with an assured drive leading from the front in an action packed start to the 2012 season. Button was obviously delighted with the result as he gleefully thanked his team stating that this was the perfect start to the season. He got past Hamilton at the start and never relinquished the advantage from there to cement his rise within the McLaren team. 2011 champion Sebastian Vettel took advantage of a safety car situation to finish second while Hamilton rounded off the podium. Despite that, third place was probably a disappointment for the McLaren driver as he was quite comprehensively out driven by his teammate and meant that his pole position yesterday counted for little.

Mark Webber was 4^th marking his best finish at his home Grand Prix the first of two Australians in the points – the other being Ricciardo who brought home his Toro Rosso in 9^th. Fernando Alonso was opportunistic, gutsy and deliberate as usual dragging home a clearly under paced Ferrari into 5^th place. The mercurial Kamui Kobayashi finished in 6^th fortuitously taking the extra place as a result of Williams’ Maldonado crashing out on the final lap. Kimi Raikkonen made a successful return to the F1 fray finishing in 7^th making an excellent comeback drive from his qualifying disaster. Sergio Perez impressed in 8^th losing a place to the wily Raikkonen late on the final lap while Paul di Resta snatched the last championship point for Force India from rookie Jean-Eric Vergne on the line.