Mark Webber is in a strong position to claim his maiden Australian Grand Prix victory after recording the third fastest time in qualifying around the Albert Park circuit today.

The Australian showed why he is considered one of the favourites for this year's drivers' championship with a time of 1min 24.395sec.

After a shaky start to the three-part qualifying, which utilises a knockout system, Webber produced the goods when required and will start from the second row of the grid on Sunday.

Webber was ninth fastest in the first qualifying session which saw the field reduced to 15. In the second session Webber began to find his groove and clocked the fifth fastest time as the numbers were culled to 10.

In the third and final qualifying session, Webber ramped up the pressure and recorded the fastest time with mere minutes remaining. However, on the very next lap, the 2010 world champion Sebastian Vettel (1min 23.529) bettered his teammate's time and effectively secured the first pole position of the 2010 season.

Webber was then dealt a cruel blow as he narrowly missed out on securing a position on the front row of the grid after Lewis Hamilton managed to record the second fastest time on his last lap of qualifying.

Although the crowd favourite was able to record a competitive time in trying conditions he was not satisfied and said at his media confernece he felt that he should have performed better.

"Today obviously didn't go to plan and I'm not overly rapt to be third on the grid. Clearly we weren't in a fight for pole today so we will need to address that before tomorrow's race," a frustrated Webber said.

"I was disappointed with my performance and Sebastian put in a very good lap. I'm mystified by the gap to be honest, I tried my best. I'll have to go through it and have a look at where I can improve and go from there.

"It's frustrating, but credit to the team; the guys have done an incredible job. Obviously it wasn't the best day for me, but the bar is high."

Webber did, however, take several positives out of the first qualifying session of the season and praised his crew for giving him another competitive car: "I would like to have done better, but reflecting on the performance of the team and what they've done over the winter - it's incredible."

"It's a long season and we are in a good position for tomorrow but at the same time Sebastian is fast and it is going to be a tough battle if I am to win."

Vettel was also full of praise for the Red Bull team and thanked them for work over the off season in preparing the RB7.

"We've been working very hard to this RB7 to where it is now - its thanks to all those in the factory and these here, Down Under, for preparing the car," he said.

"We have made the first step and starting the season this way with a pole position is a good sign for the team. If you look at the points we still have zero like everyone else, so we need to see what happens tomorrow."

In a surprising move by the Red Bull Racing team neither drivers utilised their Kinetic Energy Recovery System and when asked neither Vettel nor Webber were willing to reveal the reasoning behind the decision.

"We didn't use it in qualifying that is correct," Vettel confirmed before being asked to clarify the decision by a journalist. The German then sat in silence for several seconds before a grin slowly crept across his face as he added sarcastically that "it wasn't fully charged."

Webber responded as coyly as his teammate and chose his words even more carefully than Vettel before answering.

"No I didn't use KERS either," he said. "We didn't run it today for reasons that we will keep in the team."

McLaren Mercedes also proved that the form they showed on Friday was far from the fluke that many had presumed it was with Hamilton qualifying second and Jenson Button securing fourth on the grid.

As late as last week, Hamilton had voiced concerns over the lack of down force his car was producing and thoughts of a victory in Melbourne were abandoned.

However after today's qualifying those concerns must have well and truly disappeared as the two silver bullets proved their cars are as fast as the two Red Bulls.

"It was lacking down force and what down force enables you to do is brake later, attack the corners faster, to get on the power earlier and improving your down force you improve your minimum speed which allows you to gain valuable seconds during a race," Hamilton said.