It was close in the end in the fight for pole position but home hero Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton took it on in the 2018 Formula 1 British Grand Prix at Silverstone to beat Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel and Kimi Raikkonen.
Q1:
The first part of qualifying was red-flagged after Williams’ Lance Stroll lost his rear and beached the car on the gravel trap on his fast lap, thereby ending his session. It left his teammate Sergey Sirotkin to make it through into Q2.
However, the Russian also had a spin at Stowe on his quick lap, but managed to push himself out from the gravel trap. Despite his efforts, he was only 18th with a 1m29.252s laptime. It was only Stroll and Toro Rosso’s Brendon Hartley behind him.
The Kiwi didn’t start qualifying after his crash in FP3. Renault’s Carlos Sainz (1m28.456s) in 16th and McLaren’s Stoffel Vandoorne (1m29.096s) in 17th were knocked out in Q1 with the former facing traffic on his final lap where he lost few tenths to get through.
In a different strategy, Ferrari’s Vettel (1m26.585s) topped the session on the soft tyres from the Mercedes drivers Hamilton (1m26.818s) and Bottas (1m27.025s), who were on the medium compound, same as Vettel’s teammate Kimi Raikkonen.
Q2:
The second session saw no one but Toro Rosso’s Pierre Gasly (1m28.343s) improving on his second run outside the Top 10 drivers. Renault’s Nico Hulkenberg (1m27.901s) finished 11th ahead of Force India’s Sergio Perez (1m27.928s) in the midfield battle.
McLaren’s leading car of Fernando Alonso (1m28.139s) was only 13th with some new power unit parts with the aforementioned Gasly beating Sauber’s Marcus Ericsson (1m28.391s) to be 14th – the Swede missing on a Top 10 unlike his teammate Charles Leclerc.
At the front, there was no strategy difference for the Sunday’s race start as everyone opted to post their quick laptime on the soft compound as Hamilton (1m26.256s) led Vettel (1m26.372s) and Bottas (1m26.413s).
Q3:
Vettel held provisional pole in the final part of the session after the German posted a 1m25.936s to beat Hamilton’s 1m25.993s laptime. Bottas had third from Raikkonen with Red Bull Racing’s Daniel Ricciardo far off due to a DRS issue.
Force India’s Esteban Ocon did his lap together with the leaders but Leclerc and the two Haas drivers left it for just the one run, but had enough to beat Ocon and Leclerc both in the end.
The second run for Hamilton wasn’t the best but he managed to still improve to a 1m25.892s and beat Vettel (1m25.936s) by just the 0.044s margin. Raikkonen (1m25.990s) had purple Sector 1 and Sector 3 but missed out by only 0.098s margin.
Hamilton took his sixth consecutive pole position at his home circuit in Silverstone and has track position over Vettel in the close fight for the drivers’ championship. Bottas (1m26.217s) couldn’t improve on his time to be fourth.
For Row 3, it was all-Red Bull with Max Verstappen (1m26.602s) ahead of Ricciardo (1m27.099s) after the latter couldn’t improve on his time with DRS issues. Kevin Magnussen took the best of the rest honours with a 1m27.244s laptime.
He beat his teammate Romain Grosjean (1m27.455s) in eighth with Sauber’s Leclerc (1m27.879s) finishing ahead of the Force India of Ocon (1m28.194s).
