Hamilton eyes good fight with Rosberg

Lewis Hamilton produced the perfect lap to take his fourth Melbourne pole, but he is expecting a hard fight with team-mate Nico Rosberg during Sunday's Australian GP.

After Rosberg dominated Friday's two Free Practice sessions, Hamilton was on top of his game on Saturday as he set the pace in FP3 as well as the three qualifying runs.

Of course Q3 is where it counts and he pretty much nailed pole position with a 1:26.419 at the first time of asking and then improved that to 1:26.327 with his final lap, leaving Rosberg 0.594s behind in second place.

"It has been a great start to the weekend. It doesn't feel like a long time since the last race," Hamilton said after qualifying. 

"We found a good balance today and it was just about trying to push those laps. It is so much fun in qualifying pushing those single laps. I'm just massively grateful for all the hard work."

Hamilton also started on pole at Albert Park last year, but he failed to see the chequered flag after an engine problem at the start of the race. He is hoping for a different outcome on Sunday and, with Mercedes so far ahead of the chasing pack, he is eyeing a good battle with Rosberg.

"Well we had a difficult start to the season here last year so definitely as a team as a whole we are hoping for a better start for both cars," he said. 

"We are going to work as hard as we can to make sure we can do that. Lots of hard work tonight to study for the race tomorrow. That's obviously going to be a huge challenge and hopefully a good fight with Nico."