Sebastien Vettel stormed to his second pole in two race weekends of the 2010 season as he put in a stunning qualifying lap round the Albert Park circuit in Melbourne. It was a one-two for Red Bull as Mark Webber made it to the front row for his home grand prix and Bahrain winner Fernando Alonso brought in his Ferrari in third place (full results).

Jenson Button made amends for his Bahrain show and slotted in his McLaren at third, though the team will be highly disappointed with Lewis Hamilton’s shocking inability to get into Q3. The only good thing that could come out of it is that he can opt to start on hard tyres while all in the top ten used softs for their qualifying runs. Talking more of team-mate rivalries, Felipe Massa seemed unable to cope with Alonso’s pace while Michael Schumacher made an improvement from, only 4/100s of a second away from Nico Rosberg but yes still behind.

Rubens Barrichello (Williams), Robert Kubica (Renault) and Adrian Sutil (Force India) completed the top ten and will be in the mix throughout the season presumably. The battle for ‘best of the rest’ it seems will be decided down to whose team-mate plays a better support role. In that sense Vito Liuzzi is the best placed driver as Nico Hulkenberg disappointed while Vitaly Petrov must be downbeat at having not even made Q2.

India’s Karun Chandhok ought to be upbeat that he has had a relatively trouble free weekend so far, barring second Friday practice. At one point he was up to 22^nd on the grid only to end up within a tenth of Bruno Senna’s time. Hispania will continue to linger in the back for this race as well unless Virgin’s fuel tanks give out. Twenty-four cars will run on Albert Park for the first time ever and getting past these slow moving back-markers will be a tough job.

Looking ahead to the race, Vettel’s Q3 time was the only sub-1:24 lap so far this weekend and gave ample proof of the Red Bull’s pace here. Even more telling though were Mark Webber’s runs in Q2. He was consistently quicker on prime tyres while Alonso tried hard to catch him on the option tyres. Webber got his quick time then on a run of four laps clearly indicating that prime is the best working tyre here although it will take two to three laps to get it working. That will become a problem towards the end of the twilight race and perhaps that was the reason for Hamilton losing out, not able to work temperatures into his tyres.

Possibility of rain, tyres losing temperature and safety car appearances make for an intriguing race to look forward to.