Hamilton tells Vettel: I wanted to wipe the smile off your face!

Lewis Hamilton was happy to "wipe the smile" off Sebastian Vettel's face with his incredible pole position-sealing lap at the Australian Grand Prix on Saturday. Hamilton secured first spot on the grid with a lap-record one minute 21.164 seconds at Albert Park.

Vettel had earlier lowered the benchmark at the end of Q2 and the fight for pole position looked like being decided by the slimmest of margins until Hamilton pulled out a staggering lap time, which left him six tenths ahead of second-place Kimi Raikkonen and the other Ferrari of Vettel.

A seventh pole position in Australia saw Hamilton take another record for his own, having moved level with Ayrton Senna a year ago.

Another mighty qualifying effort seals @LewisHamilton's 73rd career pole #Quali #AusGP #F1 pic.twitter.com/t8Q0nt5s26 — Formula 1 (@F1) March 24, 2018

Hamilton, Vettel and Max Verstappen had been separated by just six hundredths of a second before the final runs, leading to questions about the Mercedes' engine mode for qualifying - dubbed "party mode" by Hamilton at a sponsor event in the week.

Hamilton said that his engine had not been turned up for his final lap, leading to an amusing exchange with Vettel in the post-qualifying press conference.

"I can assure you we don't have a party mode," he said.

"I used the same mode from Q2 to the end of Q3. There was no extra mode, no extra button I engaged in."

A slightly incredulous Vettel asked: "What were you doing before?"

And Hamilton responded: "I was waiting to put a good lap in to wipe the smile off your face!"

Vettel won from second on the grid last year after Ferrari outfoxed Mercedes with pit-lane strategy.

Hamilton will not have team-mate Valtteri bottas in close proximity off the line on Sunday after the Finn wrecked his car in a crash into the wall at turn two on the first runs of Q3, bringing out a red flag in the process.