Brilliant Hamilton snatches pole position at Silverstone

Lewis Hamilton for the sixth time will start from pole position after he was impressive in the qualifying for the British Grand Prix at Silverstone. The Mercedes driver recorded 57th pole position in his career and third consecutive at his home circuit.

Even before the start of qualifying it was known that Fernando Alonso will start the race from the bottom of the grid after multiple penalties for the use of new power unit and additional components. At the same time, Valtteri Bottas and Daniel Ricciardo will drop five places for unscheduled gearbox changes.

Daniel Ricciardo had to retire early

Pretty heavy rain made the start of qualifying session a bit trickier. Ricciardo parked his Red Bull near the pit entrance in the moment when he had the best result. The session was red-flagged but without the Australian driver who failed to progress in Q3 for the first time since the Italian Grand Prix at Monza in 2015.

Kevin Magnussen, Pascal Wehrlein, Marcus Ericsson, and Lance Stroll also were eliminated from Q2. What was the most interesting point of this part of the session was the fact that Fernando Alonso in McLaren drove the fastest lap – 1:37.598 – what caused the fans became ecstatic. The last time when McLaren topped the Q1 was in 2013 at the Grand Prix of India.

Fernando Alonso was the fastest in Q1

In the second qualifying round Mercedes was dominant. Lewis Hamilton was the fastest with 1:27.893 what was almost one-second better than the result of his teammate. On the other side, Felipe Massa, Carlos Sainz Jr, Fernando Alonso, Daniil Kvyat, and Jolyon Palmer were eliminated from the Top 10 Shootout.

The last 12 minutes of qualifying weren’t too exciting. Hamilton secured another pole position with the lap time of 1:26.600. Kimi Raikkonen will start from the second place while Sebastian Vettel and Max Verstappen will occupy the second starting row.

Kimi Raikkonen was the better of two Ferrari drivers in qualifying for the British Grand Prix

Nico Hulkenberg and Sergio Perez will start from positions 5 and 6 respectively, Esteban Ocon and Stoffel Vandoorne will be behind them, while Valtteri Bottas and Romain Grosjean are in the fifth row of the starting grid.

Photo: formula1.com