Provisional starting line-up Australia | It's a Red Bull sandwich

Max Verstappen in pole position and Sergio Perez dropping out during Q1 means the entire grid is a Red Bull Racing sandwich. This is the provisional starting grid for Sunday's Australian Grand Prix.

An exciting qualifying session, in which the margins up to Q3 were particularly small, made for a surprising top three. The fastest man was not such a surprise, Verstappen gettng the fastest time. The P2 and P3 of George Russell and Lewis Hamilton were not expected.

Mercedes astonishingly fast, De Vries just beaten

Mercedes will start Australia's race behind Verstappen's Red Bull. With that, they beat both Ferrari and Aston Martin on Saturday. Honourable mentions go to Nico Hülkenberg of Haas who is on P10 and Alexander Albon of Williams who qualified on P8.

For the other Dutchman on the grid, Nyck de Vries, qualifying seemed to go better than the previous two. In Q1, the AlphaTauri driver was faster than teammate Yuki Tsunoda. That teammate still managed to trump the Dutchman in the closing stages of Q2, at the last minute, with a time over two-tenths faster.