Lewis Hamilton has taken pole position for the Italian GP with a time of 1:23.397 – Quarter-of-a-second ahead of Kimi Raikkonen and Sebastian Vettel. His teammate, Nico Rosberg, lines up in 4th.
Before qualifying, Mercedes found an issue with Nico Rosberg’s engine and replaced it with the unit used at Spa. The German would not suffer a grid penalty but had a slight power disadvantage for the session.
In Q1, the engineers at Toro Rosso and Red Bull were busy working on Verstappen and Ricciardo’s cars for the majority of the session. Ricciardo managed to progress to Q2, whilst Max took to the circuit for an exploratory lap which included his engine cover breaking off.
The McLaren duo knew their only competition would be each other, and Jenson Button came out on top by a tenth. Both, as expected, lost out in the session.
Eliminated in Q1 were: Verstappen (20th), Merhi (19th), Stevens (18th), Alonso (17th) and Button (16th).
In Q2, Raikkonen impressed early on by setting a time just four-tenths away from Hamilton’s benchmark. Vettel followed suit, with the Ferrari’s splitting the Mercedes duo.
Ricciardo didn’t participate in the session and was out. His teammate, Daniil Kvyat posted the slowest time of the session and finished 14th. Carlos Sainz Jr in the remaining Renault powered car couldn’t do better than 13th. Nasr finished 12th, behind Pastor Maldonado.
This left seven out of eight Mercedes-powered cars in the top ten shootout.
Hamilton set the early pace with the two Ferrari’s just three-tenths back. Felipe Massa also managed to leap the power handicapped Rosberg after the first runs in Q3. The top six drivers were within 0.73 seconds of each other, despite the fears that Mercedes would be hugely dominant on Friday.
The Ferrari’s improved on their second runs, but Raikkonen came closest to Lewis, who couldn’t beat his own benchmark.
Rosberg finished P4, ahead of the Williams’ of Massa and then Bottas. Perez was another half-a-second back in seventh. Grosjean will need to work his way up from eighth in his attempt to secure another podium. Hulkenberg encountered power issues but placed ninth. Ericsson completed the top ten.
