Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsFormula 1

Masterful Hamilton eases to Hungary pole

Lewis Hamilton took pole position for the Hungarian Grand Prix as he beat team-mate Nico Rosberg by over half a second in qualifying at the Hungaroring.

Having been fastest in all three practice sessions, Hamilton continued his perfect weekend with a best time of 1:22.020 to comfortably beat Rosberg, who had appeared a threat at the start of the final attempts. However, Hamilton had plenty in reserve to deliver an impressive lap which gave him his ninth pole position of the season.

Rosberg came under threat from Sebastian Vettel on the final run, with Vettel ending up third but just 0.144s slower than his fellow German. Daniel Ricciardo was even closer to Vettel, qualifying 0.035s adrift of his former team-mate in fourth place.

Kimi Raikkonen will start from fifth place have set a time exactly one second slower than Hamilton, with Valtteri Bottas - tipped to replace Raikkonen at Ferrari - alongside him in sixth. Daniil Kvyat, Felipe Massa, Max Verstappen and Romain Grosjean complete the top ten, with reliability issues for McLaren preventing Fernando Alonso and Jenson Button from attempting to reach Q3.

Q2 was interrupted by a red flag as Alonso stopped at the pit entry. The Spaniard then started pushing his car in to the pit lane on his own, before marshals helped him get it back to the garage. Sadly for Alonso, the issue was terminal for his session and he was eliminated.

With Alonso already out, the remaining four slots were filled by Nico Hulkenberg, Carlos Sainz, Sergio Perez and Pastor Maldonado. Force India's problems on Friday put the team on the back foot, but Maldonado will be disappointed to be 0.8s down on team-mate Grosjean's time which took him through.

Jenson Button was unfortunate to drop out in Q1 as he missed out by just 0.1s on his final lap having been running strongly early in the session. As everyone improved on their final laps, Button failed to get deployment of the ERS on the pit straight and the team confirmed it had cost him a spot in Q2.

Button joined the two Sauber drivers in the bottom five, with Marcus Ericsson outqualifying Felipe Nasr by just over 0.1s, while Roberto Merhi beat team-mate Will Stevens by half a second as the two Manors will start from the back row.

AS IT HAPPENED: Hungarian Grand Prix qualifying

Click here for a gallery of Sergio Perez's crash in FP1 at the Hungarian Grand Prix

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Pos	Driver	Team	Q1	Q2	Q3
01	Lewis Hamilton	Mercedes	1:22.890	1:22.285	1:22.020
02	Nico Rosberg	Mercedes	1:22.979	1:22.775	1:22.595
03	Sebastian Vettel	Ferrari	1:23.312	1:23.168	1:22.739
04	Daniel Ricciardo	Red Bull	1:24.408	1:23.230	1:22.774
05	Kimi Raikkonen	Ferrari	1:23.596	1:23.460	1:23.020
06	Valtteri Bottas	Williams	1:23.649	1:23.555	1:23.222
07	Daniil Kvyat	Red Bull	1:23.587	1:23.597	1:23.332
08	Felipe Massa	Williams	1:23.895	1:23.598	1:23.537
09	Max Verstappen	Toro Rosso	1:24.032	1:23.781	1:23.679
10	Romain Grosjean	Lotus	1:24.242	1:23.805	1:24.181
11	Nico Hulkenberg	Force India	1:24.115	1:23.826
12	Carlos Sainz	Toro Rosso	1:24.623	1:23.869
13	Sergio Perez	Force India	1:24.444	1:24.461
14	Pastor Maldonado	Lotus	1:23.895	1:24.609
15	Fernando Alonso	McLaren	1:24.563
16	Jenson Button	McLaren	1:24.739
17	Marcus Ericsson	Sauber	1:24.843
18	Felipe Nasr	Sauber	1:24.997
19	Roberto Merhi	Manor	1:27.416
20	Will Stevens	Manor	1:27.949

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.