About today's action then. First of all, Sauber's Ericsson was unable to participate in the qualifying due to his severe-looking crash in FP3 this morning. Mercedes' pace was crushing, almost frightening from the very start of the first session. Both Hamilton and Rosberg came out on the soft tyres, Hamilton having slightly the upper hand over his teammate; the Mercedes duo was separated by only 15 thousandths of a second. Kimi and Sebastian in their Ferraris made one attempt towards the end of the first segment. Red Bull's pace seemed strong right from the beginning, especially Max seemed to be flying around Silverstone. The Dutchman was 3rd fastest in Q1, with Kimi 4th and Sebastian 5th. McLaren's Button was pushing hard to make it Q2, but in spite of the support from the home crowd, the Briton failed. There was zero tolerance for exceeding the track limits in turns 9, 15 and 18. Button's team thought that Renault's Magnussen's time was going to be deleted due to track limit violation, so Button was rushing back to his car, when Q2 was about to get underway. However, Button was inevitably out of the second session.
In Q2 the Mercedes drivers were again the first ones to come out and set fastest lap times. Hamilton set an unbelievable and outstanding time; 1.29.243 is the fastest ever lap time at modern Silverstone! Rosberg was massive 7 tenths down on his teammate! These times made sure, that the Mercedes duo didn't have to come out again in the second session. Kimi ended up locking up his front tyres and spinning on his first run, which forced the Iceman to pit for a fresh set of soft tyres. There were about four minutes left in the clock, when the Finn headed out for his second run. Again there was drama, as Kimi went wide and his lap was ruined! Luckily he had just enough time to make one more attempt, which made the Iceman jump 6th in the standings. Alonso in his McLaren brought refreshing variation for the top ten, as the Spaniard made it as high as P9. In terms of Toro Rosso, once again it was Sainz, who managed to make it through to the final session; whereas teammate Kvyat was out of Q3. Maybe the highest profile casualty was Williams' Massa, who couldn't make it higher than P12 today, and was therefore out of Q3.
The first attempts in Q3 saw Hamilton setting the pace and going fastest, with teammate Rosberg 3 tenths down on the Briton. However, Hamilton's time was deleted only a moment later due to exceeding the track limits at Turn 9. This meant, that everything depended on Hamilton's final run. Sebastian had made a small mistake on his first run, and the German had almost lost the control of his SF16-H. Hamilton showed, how good he's at handling the pressure and snatched pole from his teammate at the end of the session. Finally there were three tenths separating the Mercedes duo, in favour of the reigning world champion. Red Bull emerged as Mercedes' number one contender, as Verstappen qualified 3rd and teammate Ricciardo fourth. This was the first time for Verstappen to outqualify his Red Bull teammate! Kimi qualified 5th and Sebastian 6th. Surprisingly, there were 6 tenths separating the Ferrari duo, in favour of Kimi. Bottas qualified 7th, Hulkenberg 8th, Sainz 9th and Alonso 10th. Unbelievably, Sebastian has once again been handed a 5-place grid penalty for a gearbox change! This means the German will be dropped down to P11 on the grid.
I'll head home by the time the lights go out at Silverstone. I don't actually know what kind of weather the weather forecast predicts for tomorrow, but there might be some surprises on the way. I definitely hope, that Ferrari's race pace will be more convincing than their one-lap pace! Verstappen has an excellent starting position, but will the flying Dutchman be able to challenge the Silver Arrows? And I definitely wouldn't mind seeing a touch of red on the podium as well ;)
P.S. It was late at night, when I read about Ferrari renewing Kimi's contract for 2017! It was mega news, I was so so overwhelmingly happy about that! It means I have one more year to enjoy the performance of the ultimate dream team!
Ei kommentteja:
Lähetä kommentti