Jenson Button of Britain (centre), who took the pole position for the Australian GP, with teammate Rubens Barrichello (right) and Sebastian Vettel of Red Bull on Saturday. Barrichello and Vettel will start second and third, respectively. (AP)

Melbourne: Briton Jenson Button seized pole position for the season-opening Australian Grand Prix on Saturday in a fairytale front row sweep for his new Brawn GP team.

Brazilian teammate Rubens Barrichello will line up alongside Button in Sunday’s race in a remarkable turnaround for a team that was fighting for Formula One survival earlier this year.

Force India who looked like repeating last season’s disappointment after Giancarlo Fisichella and Adrian Sutil made it at 18th and 19th respectively in qualifying, benefited at the cost of Toyota. Timo Glock and Jarno Trulli, who had finished sixth and eighth respectively in qualifying, were later pushed to the back of the grid after the stewards’ ruling that their cars’ rear wings were too flexible. Fisichella will now start 15th while teammate Sutil will be 16th on the grid.

McLaren’s Lewis Hamilton, in his first race as Formula One’s youngest champion, will start 18th after a gearbox failure kept him in the garage from the end of the first session.

The 24-year-old would have been last but he moved up two places following the Toyota penalty.

His Finnish teammate Heikki Kovalainen, who will be starting in a far heavier car, lines up 12th on a grid turned upside down by the sport’s radical new regulations.

Ferrari’s Brazilian Felipe Massa, last year’s overall runner-up, will start sixth with 2007 champion Kimi Raikkonen seventh after the Toyota drivers’ exclusion.

Germany’s Sebastian Vettel, preparing for his first race with Red Bull after moving up from sister team Toro Rosso, shared the second row with Poland’s Robert Kubica for BMW-Sauber.

Germany’s Nico Rosberg qualified fifth for Williams while Australian Mark Webber starts eighth for Red Bull.

For Force India, Sutil’s ninth place finish in Saturay’s practice sessions raised the hopes of the VJM02 car making it to the Q2 for a better start in the season opener Sunday but it proved a false promise.

“For sure we were hoping after Saturday’s performance to be able to make it into Q2 but in the end it was not possible. Things looked better in practice but perhaps the others were not showing all their potential,” said a candid Sutil.