SILVERSTONE, Aug 1 — Six times Formula One world champion Lewis Hamilton shattered the Silverstone track record with a blistering lap to put dominant Mercedes on pole position for his home British Grand Prix today.
The 35-year-old, who will be chasing a record seventh win at Silverstone tomorrow, was joined on the front row by Finnish team mate Valtteri Bottas with Red Bull’s Max Verstappen qualifying third.
The pole was the 91st of Hamilton’s career and seventh at Silverstone and he made sure of it with a lap of one minute 24.303 seconds after Bottas had led the opening two sessions on a gusty afternoon.
Hamilton had spun at Luffield at the start of the second phase of qualifying, without damaging his car but bringing out red flags due to the amount of gravel scattered across the track.
“Qualifying is a lot about confidence building and... I was already down and I was struggling through the first sector in every lap,” Hamilton told 2009 champion Jenson Button in an interview after stepping out of the car.
“I don’t know how, but with some deep breaths I managed to compose myself. Q3 (the final phase) started off the right way but it still wasn’t perfect the first lap but still a really clean lap, and the second one even better.”
Bottas, five points adrift of his team mate in the championship after three races, could only manage a best effort of 1:24.616.
Verstappen was more than a second off Hamilton’s pace as the best of the rest, with Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc joining him on the second row while his four times champion team mate Sebastian Vettel qualified 10th.
“I think the lap at the end of Q3 was actually pretty good but you could just see pretty early on in qualifying they were just way too fast, as they have been in the last three races,” said Verstappen.
The Dutch driver’s Thai team mate Alexander Albon failed to make the top 10, continuing a run of poor Saturday form by qualifying 12th.
That places him alongside AlphaTauri’s Pierre Gasly, the Frenchman who occupied the Red Bull seat before him.
Gasly missed out on the final top 10 shootout by the slimmest of margins, setting the same time as Racing Point’s Canadian Lance Stroll who went through because he did his lap first.
McLaren’s British driver Lando Norris will line up in fifth place, ahead of Stroll in sixth, with team mate Carlos Sainz seventh and Renault’s Australian Daniel Ricciardo eighth.
Qualifying was held without spectators due to the COVID-19 pandemic. — Reuters
