Hamilton holds off Ferraris for 11th pole

Lewis Hamilton took his 11th pole position of the season at the Italian Grand Prix, but was pushed all the way by the two Ferraris.

Having completed a clean sweep of practice, Hamilton was the heavy favourite for pole but had seen his advantage reduced with each session by the Ferraris. Sebastian Vettel looked like Hamilton's nearest challenger, sitting 0.3s adrift after the first runs, with Kimi Raikkonen just 0.007s adrift.

On the final attempts, Hamilton failed to improve but saw the two Ferraris only go slightly quicker, with Raikkonen taking second place, 0.234s adrift. Vettel ended up third by 0.288s as Nico Rosberg took fourth place having reverted to an older specification of power unit.

Rosberg was over 0.3s adrift of Hamilton - who took his seventh consecutive pole - but managed to put nearly a quarter of a second between himself and the two Williams cars on row three, with Felipe Massa outqualifying team-mate Valtteri Bottas. Sergio Perez, Romain Grosjean, Nico Hulkenberg and Marcus Ericsson rounded out the top ten.

Hamilton's opening lap in Q2 was the fastest seen all weekend and looked ominous for the chasing pack, but both Ferraris got close to hint at a challenge for pole position. There was close fight for the final slots in Q3, with Ericsson delivering an impressive lap to make it through as team-mate Felipe Nasr failed to improve and dropped out.

Grosjean's final lap put him in to the top ten, but Pastor Maldonado finished 11th, just ahead of Nasr but 0.053s adrift of Hulkenberg in tenth. With Daniel Ricciardo not running, Carlos Sainz and Daniil Kvyat both set times comfortably off the pace as all three face power unit penalties.

Q1 saw a race against time for both Red Bull and Toro Rosso as engine changes for Ricciardo and Max Verstappen left them unable to run until the final few minutes. While Ricciardo managed to get out on track and set a time, Verstappen was sent out with just 20 seconds remaining in order to set a sector time. However, the Toro Rosso's engine cover came off at Curva Grande, leaving debris all over the circuit.

With Ricciardo making it through to the second part of qualifying, his time knocked out both McLarens, with Jenson Button beating team-mate Fernando Alonso by just 0.1s. Another British driver to beat a Spanish team-mate was Will Stevens, who outqualified Roberto Merhi by 0.2s.

Both Manors will profit from power unit penalties for McLaren, Red Bull and Toro Rosso to start further up, with Button receiving the smallest penalty with five places, Alonso facing a ten-place drop as well as Verstappen.

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