Formula One

LEWIS HAMILTON TAKES A COMMANDING 150 th MCLAREN POLE POSITION FOR THE HUNGARIAN GRAND PRIX.

Romain Grosjean with his best qualifying to date will have a front row start in Budapest.

LEWIS: “There is no real secret to Sunday’s race, it is the same as anyone else, You have to keep your head cool and make sure you look after your tyres. Tyre strategy will be important tomorrow, and degradation will be interesting.

I didn’t do any long runs this morning, I did mine yesterday and they were pretty good. The track was a little bit greener yesterday so its difficult to compare. We know Lotus is long through long runs and so is the Red Bull, so we just need to focus on us.

Jenson showed those German GP upgrades are an improvement and hopefully I can show the same thing tomorrow. We have a long race tomorrow so lots can happen, but we need to keep cool.

It has been a really positive weekend so far, we can finally see the upgrades working this weekend, being able to put car in places I previously wasn’t able to,” he reported.

I am always striving for the perfect lap, and to get that is intense and exciting and if you get it right it is incredibly empowering. This weekend we have obviously had pace, we knew it was possible but it was just a case of doing it.

Considering we have had pace all weekend,[missing pole would have been disappointing, so I am happy I have done it.

This is motor racing – we are not saying we are relaxed about it, we know we have a lot of work to do. We need to make sure we start that work this weekend.”

Romain: “We started the weekend coming back from the German GP, which was a bit of disaster. We worked hard, and analysed what went wrong, why I couldn’t get the feeling I had at the start of year.

In final practice it was getting better, and then we found the speed, got back into the car and tried to understand what was wrong with it.

Starting from the front row is special. We know overtaking is difficult so the first job is done. Hopefully tomorrow we will keep our race pace and be able to save our tyres as much as we want and get some good battles with the guy at the front.

I think it was a lot of things together. I think in the last two races we were not where we had to be. We had some signs that things were not going as we wanted. The car was not handling as it should. So I think being second is a bit of a surprise after we struggled, but we improved lap after lap and I think this helped us.”

Normally it is better on high fuel than low fuel so it’s pretty good to be on the front row. We have been working a bit more on qualifying because it is a big key to the race. Hopefully the car will be good in the race. We have saved tyres and hopefully we have a good pace.”

SEBASTIAN:“It was difficult session for us. We didn’t get into qualifying how we would like and the rhythm wasn’t there straight away. We burned more tyres than we thought in the beginning, so we only had one new set for Q3. The run we had was okay, but I didn’t get the same feeling that I got at the end of Q2, which was a surprise, so we didn’t seem to go with the track and make another step. Romain was in reach, but Lewis was another step. We know it’s difficult to overtake here, but hopefully we will have a good start. Tyre management will be crucial.”

Pos Driver Team Time Gap 
 1.  Lewis Hamilton        McLaren-Mercedes     1m20.953s        
 2.  Romain Grosjean       Lotus-Renault        1m21.366s + 0.413
 3.  Sebastian Vettel      Red Bull-Renault     1m21.416s + 0.463
 4.  Jenson Button         McLaren-Mercedes     1m21.583s + 0.630
 5.  Kimi Raikkonen        Lotus-Renault        1m21.730s + 0.777
 6.  Fernando Alonso       Ferrari              1m21.844s + 0.891
 7.  Felipe Massa          Ferrari              1m21.900s + 0.947
 8.  Pastor Maldonado      Williams-Renault     1m21.939s + 0.986
 9.  Bruno Senna           Williams-Renault     1m22.343s + 1.390
10.  Nico Hulkenberg       Force India-Mercedes 1m22.847s + 1.894
Q2 cut-off time: 1m21.697s Gap *
11.  Mark Webber           Red Bull-Renault     1m21.715s  + 0.655
12.  Paul di Resta         Force India-Mercedes 1m21.813s  + 0.753
13.  Nico Rosberg          Mercedes             1m21.895s  + 0.835
14.  Sergio Perez          Sauber-Ferrari       1m21.895s  + 0.835
15.  Kamui Kobayashi       Sauber-Ferrari       1m22.300s  + 1.240
16.  Jean-Eric Vergne      Toro Rosso-Ferrari   1m22.380s  + 1.320
17.  Michael Schumacher    Mercedes             1m22.723s  + 1.663
Q1 cut-off time: 1m22.948s Gap *
18.  Daniel Ricciardo      Toro Rosso-Ferrari   1m23.250s  + 1.456
19.  Heikki Kovalainen     Caterham-Renault     1m23.576s  + 1.782
20.  Vitaly Petrov         Caterham-Renault     1m24.167s  + 2.373
21.  Charles Pic           Marussia-Cosworth    1m25.244s  + 3.450
22.  Timo Glock            Marussia-Cosworth    1m25.476s  + 3.682
23.  Pedro de la Rosa      HRT-Cosworth         1m25.916s  + 4.122
24.  Narain Karthikeyan    HRT-Cosworth         1m26.178s  + 4.384

Tag Cloud