Leclerc beats Verstappen to pole after Qualy crashes, Merc improve

Championship leader Charles Leclerc will start on pole for the Australian Grand Prix after outpacing 2022 rival Max Verstappen with his final lap of an exciting Melbourne qualifying that was disrupted by crashes.

Leclerc left it late but posted a mighty 1:17.868 in the dying embers of Q3 to snatch pole from Verstappen, who finished almost three tenths off the driver he has gone wheel-to-wheel with in both races to start the season.

"It feels great," said Leclerc, who now has two poles out of three this year. "We were quite surprised by our pace."

A frustrated Verstappen has complained of a lack of balance all weekend and felt that held him back again in qualifying, calling it a "struggle" and insisting there wasn't "one lap where I have felt confident".

The pair will go head to head again on the front row for Sunday's race, live on Sky Sports F1 at 6am.

Verstappen still beat Red Bull team-mate Sergio Perez, while Lando Norris delivered a superb fourth for McLaren as the team put their early 2022 struggles behind them with both cars in the top seven.

Another team who found much-needed improvement were Mercedes.

While still finishing one second off pole, Lewis Hamilton and George Russell managed fifth and sixth, lowly positions given Mercedes' F1 success of old but heady ones considering their form so far this weekend and this season.

Carlos Sainz was surprisingly only ninth in the other Ferrari, caught out by the red flags that were brought out by Fernando Alonso in the second crash of qualifying.

Alonso, who looked to be in the battle for top positions and was on a stonking opening Q3 lap, agonisingly went off in the final sector in his Alpine to end his chances.

Earlier in qualifying, there was a bizarre coming