Nico Rosberg will start his home Grand Prix from pole position whilst championship rival and Mercedes teammate Lewis Hamilton crashed his car in the early stages.
Nico Rosberg will start his home Grand Prix from pole position whilst championship rival and Mercedes teammate Lewis Hamilton crashed his car in the early stages.
The Brit suffered a front right brake disk failure as he entered the stadium section of the circuit. He was due to start in 15th place however the team have decided to change the brake discs; this will result in Hamilton having to start from the pitlane.
As we saw on Friday afternoon the Mercedes dominance looked to be under severe threat from the likes of Williams. The impressive form of the Williams team carried over into Saturday afternoon as they line up in 2nd and 3rd with Valtteri Bottas edging Felipe Massa.
Another team who had a great Friday were McLaren who picked up where they left off yesterday with Kevin Magnussen qualifying in a highly impressive 4th whilst Jenson Button failed to make it to the finial part of qualifying and will occupy 11th place, with former McLaren teammate Sergio Perez in front of him in 10th.
Hamilton: ‘I’m still driving’
It was a similar story at Ferrari as Kimi Raikkonen also failed to make it into the top 10 shootout and whilst Fernando Alonso did make the cut he was only able to qualify his Ferrari into 7th place at the circuit that saw his last pole position back in 2012.
Daniel Ricciardo continued to lead four time world champion Sebastian Vettel by out qualifying his teammate by .3 of a second. The Red Bull’s will line up 5th and 6th. After Ricciardo put in a very quick time on Friday that was just .102 off pace setter Hamilton the Australian couldn’t be blamed for being a little disappointed with today’s performance.
Daniil Kvyat carries on impressing in his rookie season at the Red Bull junior team as the 20 year old Russian qualified 8th in his Toro Rosso.
At the back Jules Bianchi out qualified the Lotus of Pastor Maldonado. It was confirmed by team boss Gerard Lopez that the Venezuelan would be driving for the team next season. Romain Grosjean’s sister Lotus set a time that was only good enough for 15th.
Anybody’s race
Speaking after the qualifying Hamilton told reporters when asked about his possible injuries: “Even if something was broken I’d be driving tomorrow.”
At a weekend in which there was so much emphasis being put into qualifying on Lewis’ side of the garage this will be a huge blow for the 29 year old, especially after reducing Rosberg’s lead to just four points at Silverstone.
Heading into the race Hamilton has a mountain to climb and will do very well to salvage any big points from tomorrow’s race, however Rosberg will by no means have an easy afternoon ahead of him tomorrow due to the pace that the Williams pair showed on their long run on Friday.
Reliability will be playing on the minds of the Mercedes camp this evening. They have been unreliable seemingly a lot more than other cars and aren’t as quick as they once were.
With a high chance of rain heading into tomorrow’s race and the Williams team hungry for their first win in two years would Rosberg be willing to fight the Martini liveried cars knowing the position that Hamilton starts from?
We’ll find out tomorrow.
