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2008 World Champion and current Mercedes driver Lewis Hamilton stormed to pole position at the Hungarian Grand Prix. Hamilton edged out Red Bull’s Sebastian Vettel by just 0.038 seconds to claim his 30th Pole Position. This beats Juan Manuel Fangio’s tally of 29 poles.
Everybody would have put their money on Vettel to claim pole. The German was 8 tenths ahead after his first run in Q3. Hamilton pulled out all his tricks and managed to claim his 4th pole this year and 6th front row start.
Behind them was Lotus’ Romain Grosjean who was way faster than his teammate Kimi Rakkonen, who could manage only 6th.
Hamilton’s teammate Rosberg managed 4th after a good qualifying session. Ferrari‘s Fernando Alonso and Felipe Massa put their car’s on 5th and 7th. This is the best that the team can manage at this point. The Italian team will have better race pace tomorrow and Alonso will be gunning for a podium, if not a win.
Torro Rosso’s Daniel Ricciardo had another impressive qualifying and finished in 8th whereas his teammate Jean Eric Vergne could manage only 14th.
Mclaren’s MP4-28 looks a lot better this weekend. Although their drivers Sergio Perez and Jenson Button finished in 9th and 13th, the team and drivers remain positive about the race. More importantly Perez starts ahead of Force India’s Adrian Sutil in 11th.
Sutil’s teammate Paul Di Resta dropped out in Q1 and could only manage a best position of 18th. The Scot was complaining about not finding any grip at all.
Australian Mark Webber suffered a KERS issue and managed to get into Q3, but then the Red Bull team decided to make him sit out the session and so Webber will start in 10th.
Sauber’s Nico Hulkenburg put up a good show to qualify in 12th while his teammate Esteban Gutierrez once again failed to make the cut after Q1, managing only 17th.
Williams’ drivers Pastor Maldonado and Valtteri Bottas showed good pace in Q1, but could manage to put their cars in 15th and 16th.
The back of the grid composed of the usual suspects with the order being Caterham’s Charles Pic and Giedo Van Der Garde ahead of Marussia’s Jules Bianchi and Max Chilton.
Hamilton was just as surprised when he found out that he was on pole. When his engineer told him over the radio that he was on pole, the Britain replied “Pole?” with disbelief. “Yes. We’re as surprised as you are” replied his engineer.
So that’s the grid for tomorrow’s 70 lap race. Red Bull have better race pace compared to Mercedes, but after the change in form from yesterday we will have to wait and see if Hamilton can hold off Vettel or will Vettel rule the roost in Hungary.
