German Formula One (F1) driver Sebastian Vettel began the defense of his F1 world championship with a stunning qualifying lap on Saturday, which had him secured pole position on Sunday's Australian Grand Prix (GP).

Vettel, who scored his 16th career pole and took top position in Australia for the second successive year, finished Saturday's qualifying lap in one minute and 23.52 seconds.

"What we have seen is quite promising for Sunday and surely we have done the first step and starting the season this way is a good sign for all of us in the team," Vettel told ABC Sports in Melbourne on Saturday.

"Today was the base and it couldn't have been any better.

"Car-wise, coming here we had a good feeling but we never really knew where we would be."

McLaren's Lewis Hamilton will start alongside Vettel in second, while Vettel's Red Bull team-mate Australian Mark Webber will be in third.

Hamilton was ecstatic to be starting on the front row, adding that winning in Melbourne would be a "great achievement".

Webber, who was just seven one-hundredths of a second behind Vettel on the qualifying lap, admitted to frustration and incomprehension about his relative lack of pace compared with his teammate

"I couldn't do the times today," Webber said.

"I was disappointed with my performance - (Sebastian Vettel) put in a pretty good lap but I was disappointed to get bumped off the front row as well.

"I tried my best but I'm a little bit mystified as to the gap to Seb to be honest, but I'll have to go through it and have a look at where I can improve and go from there.

"It's a bit frustrating, the team as done an incredible job but obviously it's not the best day for me.

"The bar is high and I would like to have done better but we should reflect on the performance of the team today."

Jenson Button will start alongside Webber in his McLaren, while Ferrari's Fernando Alonso qualified fifth fastest and Michael Schumacher could only manage a disappointing 11th in his Mercedes.

Meanwhile, Herald Sun reported 77,800 audiences have turned out to watch the qualifying race.

Though the numbers were almost 5,000 down on last year, race organizers remained optimistic that Sunday's race crowd would beat last year's attendance of 108,500.

According to Australian GP chief executive Andrew Westacott, the prospect of Webber to win his first home GP at his 10th attempt would boost attendance.

"The fact is Webber has delivered in qualifying. He has a great chance at winning and that would be something that Australian fans haven't seen in the 25 years of the Australian Grand Prix," Westacott told Herald Sun. "We will have much better weather on race day."

Drivers, fans and officials will pause for a minute's silence before the start of Sunday's GP race to pay their respect to victims of both the Japanese and New Zealand earthquakes.