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.
Asked if the gap to Raikkonen was a fair reflection of the battle at the front, Wolff said he suspects Hamilton's talent may have flattered the true performance of the Mercedes W09.
"The gap was down to Lewis Hamilton and putting in a lap with the grip level he didn't seem to be able to extract before," Wolff said. "It was just that everything was in the sweet spot, I guess.
"If you take the majority of the timed laps in qualifying, the Ferraris, Red Bulls and Mercedes were always very close to each other -- within a tenth on some of the laps and then there is this one outlier at the end.
"So from my always pessimistic perspective we need to find out whether Lewis just got it right and it was his driving and he found so much more or whether the reality is the narrow gaps we have seen in the session. I don't know."
There was some speculation that Hamilton's advantage during his second timed lap in Q3 may have come from Mercedes' 'party mode' engine setting, which is reserved for the final stages of qualifying, but Wolff said the same power was accessible on both of his Q3 laps.
"There is a party mode in the car but we switched the party mode on in Q3. There was no difference from the first run in Q3 to the second run in Q3, he just said that he had a great lap, pulled it all together and carried more speed through the apexes."
After teammate Valtteri Bottas crashed out in Q3, Hamilton will start from pole position with two Ferraris behind him on the grid. Max Verstappen will line up in fourth but will start on a more durable compound of tyre after electing to use the super-soft over the ultra-soft in Q2.
Asked which team presented the bigger threat to Hamilton on Sunday, Wolff added: "If everything stays like it is, even if you are able to stay in the lead with two Ferraris right behind you, you are always at that risk of being overcut or undercut by one of the cars. "One car doesn't give you as many opportunities as two and taking into consideration two more Red Bulls, he [Hamilton] will be out there at the beginning on his own, trying to fight for it. Then obviously Valtteri makes it through the field -- if that can happen, maybe he can be a supporter."