Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsFormula 1

Hamilton edges out Rosberg for pole in China

Lewis Hamilton took pole position for the Chinese Grand Prix as he just held on to beat team-mate Nico Rosberg.

After an impressive 1:35.782 on his first flying lap, Hamilton failed to improve on his final run in Q3, leaving the door open for Rosberg. However, despite setting the fastest final sector, Rosberg missed out by just 0.042s as Hamilton made it a hat-trick of pole positions this season.

Sebastian Vettel is again well placed to challenge Mercedes in the race after qualifying third, albeit 0.9s slower than Hamilton over a single lap. Ferrari's race pace is much closer to the two Mercedes, but Kimi Raikkonen's scruffy Q3 effort leaves him behind the Williams pair of Felipe Massa and Valtteri Bottas.

Daniel Ricciardo will start seventh for Red Bull ahead of Romain Grosjean's Lotus and the two Saubers of Felipe Nasr and Marcus Ericsson.

The second part of qualifying was a tight affair with Pastor Maldonado being pipped by Ericsson for the final spot in Q3 by just 0.007s. Behind Maldonado, Daniil Kvyat failed to join his team-mate in the top ten as he finished 0.082s adrift of Ericsson.

One saving grace for Kvyat was he at least managed to beat the two Toro Rosso drivers, while Sergio Perez was the other driver to drop out in Q2 as he failed to even match his time from the opening part of the session.

Q1 was a disappointing one for McLaren as both drivers failed to make it through for the third race in a row. Having shown good pace on Friday the team was targeting a spot in Q2 but Jenson Button and Fernando Alonso both missed out by 0.2s.

Nico Hulkenberg finished 16th ahead of the two McLarens, with all three cars covered by just 0.064s. It was an impressive qualifying performance from Alonso when his absence from FP3 on Saturday morning is taken in to account.

The two Manor cars also dropped out in the first part of qualifying but were comfortably inside 107%. Will Stevens beat Roberto Merhi by 0.8s - with Merhi revealing on Friday he is 15kg heavier than his team-mate - but the Spaniard was 1.5s inside the cut-off time.

Click here for Friday's gallery from the Chinese Grand Prix

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Pos	Pilote	Equipe	Q1	Q2	Q3
01	L. Hamilton	Mercedes	1:38.285	1:36.423	1:35.782
02	N. Rosberg	Mercedes	1:38.496	1:36.747	1:35.824
03	S. Vettel	Ferrari	1:37.502	1:36.957	1:36.687
04	F. Massa	Williams	1:38.433	1:37.357	1:36.954
05	V. Bottas	Williams	1:38.014	1:37.763	1:37.143
06	K. Raikkonen	Ferrari	1:37.790	1:37.109	1:37.232
07	D. Ricciardo	Red Bull	1:38.534	1:37.939	1:37.540
08	R. Grosjean	Lotus	1:38.209	1:38.063	1:37.905
09	F. Nasr	Sauber	1:38.521	1:38.017	1:38.067
10	M. Ericsson	Sauber	1:38.941	1:38.127	1:38.158
11	P. Maldonado	Lotus	1:38.563	1:38.134
12	D. Kvyat	Red Bull	1:39.051	1:38.209
13	M. Verstappen	Toro Rosso	1:38.387	1:38.393
14	C. Sainz	Toro Rosso	1:38.622	1:38.538
15	S. Perez	Force India	1:38.903	1:39.290
16	N. Hulkenberg	Force India	1:39.216
17	J. Button	McLaren	1:39.276
18	F. Alonso	McLaren	1:39.280
19	W. Stevens	Manor	1:42.091
20	R. Merhi	Manor	1:42.842

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.