Vettel heads all-Red Bull front row

Adrian Newey's design was the fastest thing around Albert Park throughout the three sessions, and Vettel edged his Australian team-mate by just over a tenth of a second to claim pole position with a 1m23.919s best in the final part of qualifying - the only lap below 1m24s so far this weekend.

The track cooled considerably during the final part of qualifying and for a while it looked as though nobody would get near the Red Bulls, as both leapt to the top of the timesheet early on.

Home hero Webber had a go at toppling his young German team-mate late-on, but lost time in the middle sector of his best lap, having been fastest of all in sectors one and three, and had to settle for second.

Only Ferrari's world championship leader Fernando Alonso hooked together a good enough lap to get close. The Spaniard's late 1m24.111s best put him third, just under two tenths shy of pole.

The rest found themselves a whopping six tenths off the Red Bull pace in final qualifying. Reigning world champion Jenson Button qualified his McLaren-Mercedes fourth, two tenths clear of Ferrari's Felipe Massa.

Both Mercedes drivers struggled to get the best from the softer tyres, so wound up sixth and seventh, with Nico Rosberg again getting the better of his seven times world champion team-mate Michael Schumacher.

Williams' Rubens Barrichello, Renault's Robert Kubica, and Force India's Adrian Sutil rounded out the top 10, as McLaren's Lewis Hamilton made a shock exit from qualifying in Q2.

The 2008 world champion aborted a quick lap during his first run and sat in the garage last of the 17 runners at the midway point of the session.

Hamilton improved to seventh fastest on his second run with the same set of soft tyres he used for his first, but fell to 11th as others improved, Hamilton's tyres fell away, and the fuel tank began to run dry.

Sutil, Barrichello and Kubica were thus able to join the rest of the drivers from the 'big four' teams for final qualifying, while both Toro Rossos, both Saubers, Nico Hulkenberg's Williams, and Tonio Liuzzi's Force India were all eliminated.

Circuit newcomer Vitaly Petrov was the only runner from the established squads to drop out in first qualifying. Toro Rosso's Sebastien Buemi sat 'on the bubble' for much of the session, before dropping the Russian into the hot seat with a late improvement.

Petrov looked set to save himself with a minute of running remaining, but suffered a massive oversteering moment through the ultra-fast turn 12 having set two personal best sector times. The Renault man did improve on a last-gasp final lap, but only got within 0.220s of Kamui Kobayashi's Sauber.

As expected, the six drivers at the three new teams were all eliminated in Q1. HRT again propped up the grid, but encouragingly got within six seconds of the outright pace in Q1 and within a second of Timo Glock's faster Virgin in 21st.

The Lotus drivers finished up fastest of the new teams, with Heikki Kovalainen just over three tenths clear of team-mate Jarno Trulli in 19th, but over two seconds adrift of Petrov's time.

Pos  Driver         Team                   Q1        Q2        Q3
 1.  Vettel         Red Bull-Renault      1:24.774   1:24.096  1:23.919
 2.  Webber         Red Bull-Renault      1:25.286   1:24.276  1:24.035
 3.  Alonso         Ferrari               1:25.082   1:24.335  1:24.111
 4.  Button         McLaren-Mercedes      1:24.897   1:24.531  1:24.675
 5.  Massa          Ferrari               1:25.548   1:25.010  1:24.837
 6.  Rosberg        Mercedes              1:24.788   1:24.788  1:24.884
 7.  Schumacher     Mercedes              1:25.351   1:24.871  1:24.927
 8.  Barrichello    Williams-Cosworth     1:25.702   1:25.085  1:25.217
 9.  Kubica         Renault               1:25.588   1:25.122  1:25.372
10.  Sutil          Force India-Mercedes  1:25.504   1:25.046  1:26.036
11.  Hamilton       McLaren-Mercedes      1:25.046   1:25.184
12.  Buemi          Toro Rosso-Ferrari    1:26.061   1:25.638
13.  Liuzzi         Force India-Mercedes  1:26.170   1:25.743
14.  de la Rosa     Sauber-Ferrari        1:26.089   1:25.747
15.  Hulkenberg     Williams-Cosworth     1:25.866   1:25.748
16.  Kobayashi      Sauber-Ferrari        1:26.251   1:25.777
17.  Alguersuari    Toro Rosso-Ferrari    1:26.095   1:26.089
18.  Petrov         Renault               1:26.471
19.  Kovalainen     Lotus-Cosworth        1:28.797
20.  Trulli         Lotus-Cosworth        1:29.111
21.  Glock          Virgin-Cosworth       1:29.592
22.  di Grassi      Virgin-Cosworth       1:30.185
23.  Senna          HRT-Cosworth          1:30.526
24.  Chandhok       HRT-Cosworth          1:30.613

All Timing Unofficial