British Formula One driver Lewis Hamilton of Mercedes AMG GP in action during qualifying ahead of the Chinese Formula One Grand Prix at the Shanghai International circuit in Shanghai yesterday. (EPA)
Reuters/Shanghai
Lewis Hamilton convincingly snared pole position for the Chinese Grand Prix yesterday as he put himself in line to win three races in a row for the first time and seize control of the championship.
Under steady rain, the British Mercedes driver was untouchable as he powered to 1min 53.860sec, his third pole position in four races this season and more than half-a-second ahead of Daniel Ricciardo.
Australian driver Ricciardo again out-qualified his Red Bull team-mate Sebastian Vettel, the four-time defending world champion, who was third in 1:54.960.
Hamilton’s team-mate and championship leader Nico Rosberg could only manage fourth place in the slippery conditions as he ran wide on the last bend of his final flying lap and spun spectacularly.
It was the 34th pole position of Hamilton’s F1 career, eclipsing the record set by the legendary Scot Jim Clark back in the 1960s, and provided more evidence that he could dominate this season.
“It’s definitely more satisfying when it’s wet. It’s so slippery out there,” Hamilton told reporters, revealing that he might have gone even quicker but for a small mistake.
“Our car is great. The lap could have been faster because I lost a little bit of time through turn 10 and I was like: ‘How are the times looking?’ So I’m ecstatic, really happy.”
Despite winning the last two races, Hamilton still trails Rosberg by 11 points in the drivers’ championship but the German will now have to start behind both Red Bulls as well as his teammate.
“Cool, alrighty,” exclaimed Ricciardo, when told over team radio he was on the front row for just the second time in his career.
“Right at the end of Q3 I managed to pull something out,” he explained later. “I wasn’t really comfortable so we made a couple of changes for that last run and, yeah, I put everything out there on that last lap.”
Rosberg complained of being off the pace throughout qualifying. “I was generally not quick enough today. I’ve been struggling with braking,” he said. “I was trying a little bit too hard in the end. I had to give it a go in the last corner and it didn’t quite work out. But it didn’t really change much.”
Ferrari’s Fernando Alonso will be fifth on the grid but his teammate Kimi Raikkonen, who had mechanical problems which severely limited his practice runs, will be down in 11th place after being eliminated in Q2.
“Yesterday the car felt better than Bahrain,” said Alonso, who has shown improved pace all week. “We are starting fifth which I think is a good result.
“Hopefully we are closer (to a podium finish) than we have been in the last couple of races. Fighting for ninth and 10th is obviously not good enough.
“So tomorrow if everything goes right we can be closer. Not with Mercedes in the dry but with Red Bull. We shouldn’t be 30 seconds behind them any more.”
Raikkonen was clearly not so confident after failing to make Q3. “We had some issues again today with downshifting,” he said. “We had issues yesterday in the dry as well.”
Brazil’s Felipe Massa showed that his rapidly improving Williams can conquer a wet track, after impressive pace in the dry on Friday, by putting himself on the third row alongside his former Ferrari team-mate Alonso.
Just behind Massa will be the second Williams driven by Finland’s Valtteri Bottas and Force India’s Nico Hulkenberg, who had grip problems and only scraped into Q3 late in the second session.
Completing the top 10 were the French duo of Jean-Eric Vergne for Toro Rosso and Romain Grosjean for Lotus.
There was a major shock in Q2 when in addition to Raikkonen, both McLarens failed to make the final top-10 shoot-out despite being powered by 2014’s all-conquering Mercedes engine. Jenson Button complained over team radio that his McLaren had no grip on the rain-sodden surface.
“I didn’t know what to expect,” he told media after being eliminated in Q2. “It’s tough in these conditions. I just hope it’s dry tomorrow.
“It’s a pity. Normally being P12 you get a benefit from having new sets of tyres you didn’t use in qualifying, but we don’t as it’s wets we’ve been running on.”
Hamilton says tyre rules deprive fans
Lewis Hamilton said F1 teams should be allowed more tyres yesterday after restrictions prompted some drivers to sit out final practice for the Chinese Grand Prix, meaning a raw deal for fans.
Hamilton claimed a British-record 34th pole position and he did it without going out for a meaningful lap in final practice yesterday morning as the rain teemed down in Shanghai. With FIA regulations only allowing four sets of intermediate tyres and three of full wets for a race weekend, many teams opted to save them so they could have a fresh set for each of the three qualifying stints later.
That left fans who had paid RMB900-3,700 ($145-600) for a grandstand seat for the weekend looking at an empty track for much of free practice. Hamilton said maybe the rules should be changed.
“Yeah, I mean, we all had to save our tyres,” he said in the post-qualifying press conference. “I don’t think it’s great for the fans that we don’t have a huge amount of tyres.”
With a dry race forecast today, teams took the gamble of cashing all their wet weather tyres in qualifying on a track described by Hamilton’s team-mate Nico Rosberg as a “tyre killer” because of its extended spiralling bends taken under braking after high-speed straights.
Hamilton, second in the drivers’ standings behind Rosberg after three races, thought the rules could be re-examined so drivers could at least “go out and run so they (fans) can see us driving”.
“I’m sure people are tuning in and turning up to the track to watch us drive and we’re kind of a little bit restricted, obviously with the engine mileage and also with the tyres.
“It would be cool if we had a little bit more tyre-life, then we would do some more running.”
