MELBOURNE, Australia -- Mercedes boss Toto Wolff has labelled Lewis Hamilton's pole position lap at the Australian Grand Prix as an "outlier", saying the gap his driver held over the rest of the field was down to finding the car's sweet spot.
The defending champion blew the rest of the field away during Saturday's qualifying session, holding a gap of over 0.6s to his nearest competitor Kimi Raikkonen. As the first competitive session of the 2018 season, it is still unclear whether Mercedes holds such a big advantage over rivals Ferrari and Red Bull or whether it was just a case of one driver excelling while the others made mistakes.