Image courtesy of Mercedes AMG Petronas
Lewis Hamilton takes pole position at his home Grand Prix and makes it 8 out of 9 poles this season. Nico Rosberg just over a tenth away and Felipe Massa completes the top 3.
Q1
Rosberg set the early pace ahead of his team-mate. The stewards following their 0% tolerance on track limits on many occasions. Victims included Hulkenberg, Verstappen and Vettel.
McLaren put on the option tyre straight away in their attempt to make Q2. Alonso’s coolant issue was rectified in time for the start of qualifying and went initially half a second faster than his teammate.
The Toro Rosso’s appeared to struggle after a promising FP3 however they both made it through.
The Ferrari’s felt the need to switch to options late on and Kimi ended on top with a 1:33.426
Eliminated in Q1 were: Nasr (16th), Alonso (17th), Button (18th), Stevens (19th) and Merhi (20th).
Q2
Rosberg again set the early pace ahead of his teammate on the option tyre with a 1:32.737. The temperatures climbed from Q1 and the tyres were fading away from their best performance.
Hamilton set a lap just 3 tenths slower despite a huge oversteer moment at Stowe.
Kimi Raikkonen’s time was deleted with 3 minutes to go and he was under pressure to perform.
Max Verstappen was vocal over team radio about his car’s poor grip still.
Bottas set a quick time late on to split the silver arrows.
Eliminated in Q2 were: Perez (11th), Grosjean (12th), Verstappen (13th), Maldonado (14th), Ericsson (15th).
Q3
Hulkenberg had already used 3 sets of option tyre and therefore had only the top-10 allocated unused set to use.
Lewis Hamilton, after the first runs, led Rosberg by just over a tenth with a 1:32.248. Followed by Bottas and Massa – 0.9 and 1.1 seconds back. The Ferrari’s of Raikkonen then Vettel followed 1.1 and 1.2 seconds away from the benchmark.
Only Massa improved on the second run as the track temperatures played away from the tyres.
The top 10 are as follows: 1. Hamilton 2. Rosberg 3. Massa 4. Bottas 5.Raikkonen 6. Vettel 7. Kvyat 8. Sainz 9. Hulkenberg 10. Ricciardo.
