Hamilton: I'm going to be battling as hard as I can for a podium

Hamilton was a second slower than Charles Leclerc's pole-winning effort in the Ferrari, to put that into perspective the Mercedes driver had until now started the Australian Grand Prix no fewer than six times in a row.

Nevertheless, despite an obvious performance deficit, not only in qualifying but perhaps more so in race trim, winning is unlikely, barring a serious mess up at the front, but a podium is realistic according to Hamilton.

“I think we did a decent job to get to where we are because we had a bigger deficit yesterday,” Hamilton told Sky F1, with reference to Friday practice.

“My last lap, I felt like I there was more in it, so I had this unexpected step of grip and didn’t get to maximise it, but I am still naturally happy with it," added the seven-time F1 World Champion.

With Ferrari's Carlos Sainz starting out of position from ninth on the grid, Hamilton figures he could be in the mix for some big points: “We’ve got a good fight up front and there are potential podiums, who knows? I'm just going to be battling as hard as I can, try and get off the line as well as I can.”

In the sister Mercedes, eking performance out of the package was a similar problem, but George Russell gave a good account of himself considering he is up against the best qualifier in F1 history enjoying an edge in Q1 and Q2, but in Q3 the younger driver got a dose of Hammer-time, and was left wanting a tenth to beat his teammate.

He was sixth fastest and said afterwards: “It’s a bit of a surprise to get pipped by one of the McLarens, they are seemingly very fast this weekend. Definitely, on low fuel, I think we should be quicker than them.

“We are still learning, still trying to understand the car. Wasn’t perfect out there; it’s bouncing around a lot and that was limiting into the fast corners, and that’s where I lost all my lap times. But I think P5, P6, we would have taken prior to the session.”

Russell added in the team report: "There is no reason why we can’t finish ahead of the McLaren. We need to try and keep Sainz behind us, I don’t really know what happened with him; he is clearly a lot quicker than us at the moment. All things going well [we could finish] P4, P5, but it’s probably won’t be quite as straightforward as that."

Indeed watching the eyeball defying driver helmets, bobbing viciously on the foot of TV screens was something to behold. how will they endure such a pounding for an entire Grand Prix? Let alone at venues with long straights, which Albert Park hardly has. More of that when we get there...

Russell continued: "It was bouncing around a lot which was really limiting into the fast corners which was where I was losing all my time. I've not been overly comfortable in the car this weekend so I was pretty happy qualifying where we did - I think we'd have taken P5 and P6 before the session."

Team boss Toto Wolff echoed his drivers: "That was a good result for us, in fact, we probably slightly over-performed with P5 and P6, because I think Alonso would have been ahead of us without his crash.

"But when you consider the challenges we are facing at the moment, the team worked very well to extract everything from the car after two difficult practice sessions yesterday.

"The drivers maximised their opportunities with the car that's under them right now, and it's great to see the positive approach they are bringing to each session as we continue learning.

"The race will be a different challenge again: protecting the tyres will be important, and nobody has had the opportunity to gather much data after the red flag yesterday in FP2. So it will be another trip into the unknown and hopefully, we have made the right choices to deliver our performance across the full race distance.

Andrew Shovlin summed up in the Mercedes Saturday report: "We found a bit of pace overnight with the changes and were able to get the tyres in a better temperature region today but there wasn't much left in the car.

"The gaps to Ferrari and Red Bull are still worryingly large but not a surprise to us; we've known since Bahrain that we have a mountain to climb this year and the team is getting stuck into that challenge. We've focused on our race pace this weekend so hopefully we have good degradation but our hopes are quite realistic.

"We're wanting to be there to capitalise on any mistakes or issues for Red Bull and Ferrari but we know we won't be able to stay on the back of them," conceded Shovlin.