On-pole Vettel happy to win ugly in Australia

FORMULA 1 fans may have been demanding the opposite, but Sebastian Vettel wanted nothing more than a boring race in the Australian Grand Pix early this morning after securing his second successive pole position.

The 22-year-old endured a race to forget at Albert Park 12 months ago when he collided with Robert Kubica while lying second with just a few laps remaining.

Bad luck prevented the German from claiming victory in this season's opener in Bahrain two weeks ago when a spark plug problem saw him drop from first to fourth.

That race received plenty of criticism due to a lack of overtaking, but Vettel was hoping for something similar today.

"I hope for a boring race and we finish as we start," he said yesterday. "I'm sorry for you, but we didn't really get the job done in Bahrain so we will try to do it here.

"In Bahrain we were obviously a bit unlucky with the failure that we had. A spark plug failure doesn't really happen too often, but it happened in that case.

"The main thing is that we carried on and we still finished fourth."

The Red Bulls of Vettel and Mark Webber have shown impressive pace so far and, along with Ferrari, are the standout performers in the early stages of the season.

Webber was due to start from second on the grid in his bid for a maiden victory at his home GP, with Ferrari's Fernando Alonso, who won the opening race in Bahrain, third and last year's Melbourne winner, Jenson Button, fourth in his McLaren. Reigning world champion Button felt that position could not have been bettered.

"We are currently getting the maximum we can from the car," he said.