Hamilton clinches eighth pole of the season in Malaysia
Lewis Hamilton has snatched pole position in a dominant showing ahead of tomorrow’s Malaysia Grand Prix. With a time of 1m32.850s, Hamilton persevered through the hot and humid conditions that the Sepang International Circuit had to offer to take his eighth pole position of the season.
Nico Rosberg followed behind by four tenths with Red Bull’s Max Verstappen ahead of his teammate on the second row.
At 1700 local time Q1 began, there was quite a bit of cloud coverage around the circuit and allowed the circuit to cool slightly despite the tropical air still making for a hot session, it was Pascal Wehrlein out first to attempt his way into Q2, Lewis Hamilton swiftly followed on the soft tyre clearly showing there was not a chance of the Mercedes team gambling on the medium tyre.
A car from one of the support races dropped a lot of fluids on the grid area prompting drivers to either avoid it or drive through to clear up some of the dust, Jenson Button had a spin early on in the session into Turn 15 following Kevin Magnussen but had caused no damage to the car. Romain Grosjean found that his Haas was losing his right-hand wing mirror while starting a hot lap showing that his experience at Haas isn’t getting any better.
Low track temperatures of 41 Celsius, the lowest that had been seen all weekend, seemed to be causing the drivers some problems out there with many drivers having off-track excursions all the circuit.
Fernando Alonso completed a time to get inside the 107% time, but took no further part in the session, he was knocked out of Q1 along with Wehrlein, Esteban Ocon, Jolyon Palmer, Felipe Nasr and Marcus Ericsson. On a positive note for Force India, they looked in very good shape at the end of Q1 with Nico Hulkenberg and Sergio Perez finishing the session in third and fourth respectively ahead of the Williams, Ferrari and Red Bull.
As Q2 got underway high rain clouds were forming around the circuit but were not causing any drops to fall on the track at that moment in time, but in Malaysia, it’s not uncommon for showers to occur at a moment’s notice. A lot of drivers left their garages swiftly to get their banker laps in just in case that the rain did arrive.
Both Mercedes left the garages to set their times on soft tyres giving us an indication of their race strategy, Nico Rosberg was the first driver to set a time and completed a 1m33.609s, but his team mate Hamilton set a time that was half a second faster to really trump his title rival, the fight was truly on.
Red Bull were showing their hand and proving they could be ahead of the Ferraris, with both Williams’ and Force Indias mixing it up amongst themselves between seventh and 10th with Felipe Massa leading the group.
As the chequered fell on the second session, it was a shock departure for Valtteri Bottas after a big lock-up into the newly reshaped final corner costing him a chance of progressing along with Carlos Sainz, Danil Kvyat, Kevin Magnussen, Esteban Gutierrez and Romain Grosjean.
With the tension rising for final qualifying runs to determine the top ten for the grid all eyes were on the Mercedes to see who would come out on top, it would Hamilton to climb to the top spot after the first runs with Rosberg struggling after a poor first lap leaving in a provisional fifth place, Hamilton dived into the 1m32s to really show his determination.
After the first runs both Max Verstappen, Daniel Ricciardo along with Kimi Raikkonen put themselves between both Mercedes, however, Felipe Massa was still ahead of the Force India’s while Button stayed in the pits for the first part of the session to preserve some tyres
With the final runs underway, all eyes were focused on Rosberg and if he could find the time to beat his team mate. With both Mercedes heading out first we got an answer very quickly, However, he couldn’t get on top of Hamilton’s time and made a mistake at the final corner which meant it was good enough for a Mercedes front row lockout, but he couldn’t take pole away from Hamilton.