Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsFormula 1

Rosberg breaks Hamilton's run with pole in Spain

Nico Rosberg ended Lewis Hamilton's dominance of qualifying by taking pole position for the Spanish Grand Prix.

The result is the first time Hamilton has been beaten in qualifying this season, with Rosberg looking strong throughout the afternoon at the Circuit de Catalunya. Having been quickest in Q2, Rosberg then put down a marker at the start of Q3 by posting a time 0.3s quicker than Hamilton. With neither driver improving on their final runs, Rosberg took his first pole of the year ahead of his team-mate.

Sebastian Vettel will start from third place having ended the session a little under 0.8s slower than Rosberg, and he will be joined by Valtteri Bottas on row two. An impressive performance from both Toro Rosso rookies saw Carlos Sainz take fifth ahead of Max Verstappen in sixth.

Kimi Raikkonen's qualifying woes returned as he could only qualify seventh on the grid, a full second slower than team-mate Vettel. Daniil Kvyat, Felipe Massa and Daniel Ricciardo complete the top ten.

The drop zone was set early in the second part of qualifying, with both Lotus and McLaren drivers joined by Felipe Nasr outside the top ten after the first runs. All five were well adrift of the Red Bulls in ninth and tenth, and despite a few improvements none of them were able to bridge the gap.

As a result, Romain Grosjean dropped out in 11th place, half a second away from a spot in Q3. He heads team-mate Pastor Maldonado, with the two McLaren's of Fernando Alonso and Jenson Button also failing to improve sufficiently and Nasr the slowest of the five to drop out.

Q1 saw the order changing rapidly at the end of the session as the majority of teams opted to run the medium compound tyre. With the two Force India drivers dropping down the order to join the Manors in the bottom five, Button required a final flying lap to make it through in to the second part of qualifying.

Mercedes had already set down a marker in Q1 as Hamilton and Rosberg set the pace on hard tyres ahead of Kimi Raikkonen, despite the latter opting to run the medium tyre late in the session.

Click here for Saturday's gallery from the Spanish Grand Prix

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Pos	Driver	Team	Q1	Q2	Q3
01	Nico Rosberg	Mercedes	1:26.490	1:25.166	1:24.681
02	Lewis Hamilton	Mercedes	1:26.382	1:25.740	1:24.948
03	Sebastian Vettel	Ferrari	1:27.534	1:26.167	1:25.458
04	Valtteri Bottas	Williams	1:27.262	1:26.197	1:25.694
05	Carlos Sainz	Toro Rosso	1:26.773	1:26.475	1:26.136
06	Max Verstappen	Toro Rosso	1:27.393	1:26.441	1:26.249
07	Kimi Raikkonen	Ferrari	1:26.637	1:26.016	1:26.414
08	Daniil Kvyat	Red Bull	1:27.833	1:26.889	1:26.629
09	Felipe Massa	Williams	1:27.165	1:26.147	1:26.757
10	Daniel Ricciardo	Red Bull	1:27.611	1:26.692	1:26.770
11	Romain Grosjean	Lotus	1:27.383	1:27.375
12	Pastor Maldonado	Lotus	1:27.281	1:27.450
13	Fernando Alonso	McLaren	1:27.941	1:27.760
14	Jenson Button	McLaren	1:27.813	1:27.854
15	Felipe Nasr	Sauber	1:27.625	1:28.005
16	Marcus Ericsson	Sauber	1:28.112
17	Nico Hulkenberg	Force India	1:28.365
18	Sergio Perez	Force India	1:28.442
19	Will Stevens	Manor	1:31.200
20	Roberto Merhi	Manor	1:32.038

Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.