Image courtesy of Mercedes AMG Petronas
Lewis Hamilton recovered from a frustrating morning in dramatic fashion as he stormed to pole position in Canada by 3 tenths from his team mate, Rosberg.
Only 19 cars competed in qualifying as Jenson Button suffered an ERS failure in FP3 that couldn’t be rectified in time.
Q1
Hamilton finally submitted a competitive time after a frustrating FP3. He and Nico swapped the lead position, separated by just 0.002 on one occasion in Nico’s favour.
Vettel revealed over team radio that his MGU-H was not working and he, worryingly, pitted.
Maldonado span in the entry to turn 2 but both Grosjean and Maldonado showed strong pace on the super soft tyre. Grosjean finishing fastest.
The surprise exits of Q1 were Vettel and Massa. Onboard shots of Vettel made it apparent that his car was running on low power and couldn’t lap fast enough. Massa also had issues and his car just did not have the pace to reach Q2 his speed trap value was 315kph as opposed to 338kph of his team mate.
Eliminated were Vettel (16th), Massa (17th), Merhi (18th), Stevens (19th) and Button (20th).
Q2
This time the Mercedes used the supersoft tyres and were back to their dominating ways. Lewis led Nico by 0.012s. A huge margin compared to Q1.
As expected, McLaren were not having an easy time at Montreal and Alonso bowed out in Q2.
Both Toro Rosso’s also struggled on this power circuit and exited as well.
Eliminated: Sainz (11th), (Verstappen 12th), Ericsson (13th), Alonso (14th) and Nasr (16th).
Q3
It was a very good session for Force India – getting both drivers through to Q3.
After the first runs it was Hamilton leading by 0.3 over Rosberg. A 1:14.393 the benchmark time. Raikkonen was 0.7s away in 3rd place but could hold off the Lotus drivers for now.
Kvyat also led his team mate in the increasingly interesting Red Bull team mate battle.
Raikkonen improved by a tenth and Bottas jumped the two Lotus’.
Neither Mercedes could improve their times on the second runs and Hamilton took pole with that earlier 1:14.393.
Top 10: Hamilton, Rosberg, Raikkonen, Bottas, Grosjean, Maldonado, Hulkenberg, Kvyat, Ricciardo and Perez.
