MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA - Britain's Jenson Button took pole position for the season-opening Australian Grand Prix on Saturday in a front row sweep for his new Brawn GP team.

Brazilian team mate Rubens Barrichello will line up alongside in Sunday's race.

The pole was Button's first in Formula One since the 2006 Australian Grand Prix, when he was driving for Brawn's predecessors Honda.

McLaren's Lewis Hamilton, who has already recognised he will struggle to score points in his first race as Formula One's youngest champion, qualified 15th after being sidelined by a gearbox problem.

His Finnish team mate Heikki Kovalainen fared little better, lining up 14th on a grid turned upside down by the sport's radical new regulations.

Ferrari's 2007 champion Kimi Raikkonen qualified only ninth while Brazilian team mate Felipe Massa, last year's overall runner-up, was seventh.

Button scored only three points in 18 races last year and his career looked heading for the scrapheap only months ago after Honda announced in December they were pulling out due to the credit crunch.

Germany's Sebastian Vettel, in a Red Bull, shared the second row with Poland's Robert Kubica for BMW-Sauber.