Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsRace weekend

Rosberg beats Hamilton to Sochi pole

Nico Rosberg took pole position for the Russian Grand Prix as Lewis Hamilton aborted his final run after an error.

With Rosberg having had the upper hand throughout qualifying, Hamilton needed to find 0.3s on his final run but went off at Turn 13 on his out lap and returned to the pits. With Rosberg not in danger from anyone other than his team-mate, he too then pitted a lap later as Mercedes locked out the front row.

Valtteri Bottas will start from third place after getting the better of Sebastian Vettel, with the Ferrari ending up just 0.053s adrift in fourth. Kimi Raikkonen also aborted his final lap after making the same mistake as Hamilton but will start fifth, with Nico Hulkenberg sixth.

It was an impressive session for Force India with Sergio Perez ending up one place behind his team-mate in seventh, with Romain Grosjean, Max Verstappen and Daniel Ricciardo rounding out the top ten.

Q2 saw a couple of surprises as Daniil Kvyat failed to reach the final part of qualifying at his home race, with his final lap only good enough for 11th place as he complained "the tyres are not ready". Things were even worse for Felipe Massa who made an error on his final run and went wide, eventually dropping out in 15th place.

Between Kvyat and Massa were Felipe Nasr, Jenson Button and Pastor Maldoando, with both Nasr and Button comfortably outqualifying their team-mates. For Button, 13th place marks his second best qualifying performance of the season, having only qualified higher in Monaco.

With Carlos Sainz not taking part in qualifying following his heavy crash in FP3, there were only four drivers who would drop out alongside the Toro Rosso in Q1. Fernando Alonso failed to make it through as he was pipped to 15th place by Nasr by 0.1s, with the Spaniard already having a 35-place grid penalty hanging over him.

Marcus Ericsson was unable to match his team-mate on his last lap and also dropped out alongside the two Manor drivers, with Will Stevens beating the returning Roberto Merhi by just 0.1s.

AS IT HAPPENED: Russian Grand Prix qualifying

Gallery: Carlos Sainz's crash in FP3

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Pos	Driver	Team	Q1	Q2	Q3
01	Nico Rosberg	Mercedes	1:38.343	1:37.500	1:37.113
02	Lewis Hamilton	Mercedes	1:38.558	1:37.672	1:37.433
03	Valtteri Bottas	Williams	1:38.448	1:38.194	1:37.912
04	Sebastian Vettel	Ferrari	1:38.598	1:38.402	1:37.965
05	Kimi Raikkonen	Ferrari	1:39.207	1:38.224	1:38.348
06	Nico Hulkenberg	Force India	1:39.250	1:38.727	1:38.659
07	Sergio Perez	Force India	1:39.617	1:38.914	1:38.691
08	Romain Grosjean	Lotus	1:39.056	1:38.754	1:38.787
09	Max Verstappen	Toro Rosso	1:39.411	1:39.119	1:38.924
10	Daniel Ricciardo	Red Bull	1:39.574	1:39.005	1:39.728
11	Daniil Kvyat	Red Bull	1:39.580	1:39.214
12	Felipe Nasr	Sauber	1:40.042	1:39.232
13	Jenson Button	McLaren	1:39.739	1:39.763
14	Pastor Maldonado	Lotus	1:39.724	1:39.811
15	Felipe Massa	Williams	1:38.926	1:39.895
16	Fernando Alonso	McLaren	1:40.144
17	Marcus Ericsson	Sauber	1:40.660
18	Will Stevens	Manor	1:43.693
19	Roberto Merhi	Manor	1:43.804
20	Carlos Sainz	Toro Rosso

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.