Sebastian Vettel
Sebastian Vettel will start from third position in the grid.Reuters

Under tricky conditions at Red Bull Ring in Spielberg, Mercedes showed why they lie at the top of the list in constructors' championships as both their drivers, Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg claimed the first two positions in the starting grid.

With a best timing of 1m 08.455s, Hamilton was the fastest in the qualifiers while his team-mate, helped him attain the pole position. Rosberg clocked at 1m 08.655s. In a rain-affected qualifying session, both Hamilton and Rosberg spun in the final lap, which just explained the tough conditions at the Red Bull Ring.

Hamilton later stated that the qualifying session was not an easy one.

"Generally it was quite a difficult qualifying session, I think, probably for everyone, just with the track conditions. I was grateful that I got my third lap in on the first run in Q3. Always pushing for that bit extra in the next run and I just locked the rears," F1 official website quoted Hamilton as saying.

With the race day on Sunday, Hamilton will go in as favourites to cross the chequered flag first. If Hamilton wins this race, it is going to be his fifth win of the season. But he is going to be challenged by Rosberg, who had a chance of claiming pole position in the final qualifying lap.

Rosberg explained as to what in fact happened.

"I went on the Astroturf out of the second to last corner and maybe that was still a bit wet or something or I just overdid after that, I'm not sure - just lost it there into the last corner. Definitely gutted but Lewis was two tenths quicker than my lap time and I was exactly two tenths up just up to that point, so I knew that I had to go for it, because it was very, very close and just overdid it."

It is Ferrari's Sebastian Vettel, who will start third from the grid in the Austrian Grand Prix. Vettel did have a decent qualifying session, but the Mercedes proved to be too quick for all other teams in the race, including Ferrari.

Vettel is the lone non-Mercedes driver to have won a race this season in Malaysian Grand Prix and he would love to come up with the same result at Austrian Grand Prix as well, but that is a huge task.

Felipe Massa will start from the fourth position, while Force India's Nico Hulkenberg was impressive with a timing of 1m 09.278s, who will start from the fifth position on the grid. But, his team-mate, Sergio Perez, was disappointing as he will start from the bottom half at 16th position.

After the qualifying session came to an end and with a few hours remaining for the main event, the question remains the same - can anyone stop Mercedes' dominance?

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Race Timing : 5:30pm IST (1pm BST, 8am ET)

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