Lewis Hamilton produced a scintillating last lap to pole position by almost seven-tenths of a second for Mercedes in qualifying for the Australian GP.
The battle had looked incredibly close between the top three teams after the first runs in the top 10 shootout, which were delayed following a crash for Valtteri Bottas, but the world champion found almost nine-tenths of a second on his final run to set a new record of 1m21.164s.
No-one could match that as Kimi Raikkonen continued his strong weekend by claiming second for Ferrari, one-hundredth clear of teammate Sebastian Vettel.
Red Bull’s lack of engine power was once again prevalent with Max Verstappen and Daniel Ricciardo fourth and fifth, the Australian will also drop back to eighth following a three-place grid penalty given after practice.
To try and compensate for their lack of single lap, both drivers will start on the Supersoft tyre and hope to use a different strategy to challenge the two teams ahead.
Haas backed up their pace all through testing and practice by leading the midfield with Kevin Magnussen and Romain Grosjean in sixth and seventh ahead of Nico Hulkenberg’s Renault, all three will move up a position after Ricciardo’s penalty.
Carlos Sainz will start ninth with Bottas set to start 10th but his Mercedes team face a long night to fix the extensive damage caused by his crash on the exit of Turns 1 and 2.
The surprise absentees from the top 10 were McLaren as both Fernando Alonso and Stoffel Vandoorne just missed out in 11th and 12th and more unexpectedly, slower than the Renault works team.
From the dominant midfield force in 2017, Force India has also slipped back with Sergio Perez only 13th and teammate Esteban Ocon struggling to get a clean lap in 15th.
Lance Stroll produced the best of the last-gasp efforts in Q1 as a fierce battle to avoid being knocked out developed between Williams, Sauber and Toro Rosso.
The Canadian will start 14th ahead of Ocon in an impressive performance. Brendon Hartley, at his defacto home race, also impressed beating his teammate Pierre Gasly by seven-tenths of a second, though his time wasn’t enough to make Q2 as he sat 16th
An excellent fight is brewing between the two Sauber drivers who improved every lap and it was Marcus Ericsson who just got the best of his rookie partner Charles Leclerc as the Alfa Romeo-badged cars finished 17th and 18th.
The other rookie, Sergey Sirotkin, was 19th in the second Williams with the aforementioned Gasly who will start alongside the Russian on the back row.