Alonso’s a yellow peril for Hammy
TED MACAULEY NICO ROSBERG was allowed to keep his pole for today’s F1 Hungarian Grand Prix in Budapest after a stewards’ inquiry.
McLaren’s Fernando Alonso spun on track right at the climax of the final qualifying session.
As Brit Lewis Hamilton approached, he slowed under yellow flag conditions, losing the chance to grab pole.
But when Rosberg approached the same incident, he did not seem to lift off as much – but the stewards let him keep pole.
The time difference in the final reckoning favoured the fortunate Rosberg. His time was 1min 19.959secs, measured against Lewis’s 1min 20.108secs.
Hamilton said: “It is what it is and I will fight from where I am but more clarification would be good.
“For us drivers, we need to fully understand the yellow flag situation.
“The way it is written is not the way it is interpreted by the drivers or the stewards.
“Double yellow is, ‘Be prepared for a car or steward on the track’. You don’t know what’s around the corner.
“So the clarification that’s needed is that Nico only lost 0.1secs in that corner. I thought that was maybe the case on single yellow but with double you had to pay more caution.
“I would never have expected to come around that corner and see Fernando facing me. I was four-tenths up at that point.
“But that’s racing. I’ll do my best from second place on the grid.”
Rosberg was initially left to celebrate his £20million two-year contract extension with his 26th career pole.
He has never finished on the podium in his 10 previous visits to Hungary but is desperate to get his championship bid back on track after seeing Hamilton win four of the last five races and cut his lead to a point.
“It was a really challenging qualifying with conditions changing the whole time,” Rosberg said.
“It was very exciting out there. I got a really good lap in so I am very happy.
“I had a big lift and I was also slower in that segment than on previous lap.”
Daniel Ricciardo was third for Red Bull, with team-mate Max Verstappen fourth.
Sebastian Vettel, last year’s winner, was fifth as Ferrari team-mate Kimi Raikkonen only managed 14th. Alastair Cook’s men racked up an imposing 589-8 declared in the Manchester sun before reducing the tourists to 57-4 at stumps. Limping Pakistan trail by 532 runs and will need an almighty effort to stop England squaring the series. Hungry England should have faced a tough slog to claim 20 wickets on this batsmanfriendly pitch but having gone 1-0 down in the first Test they have already bitten a sizeable chunk out of the Pakistani batting. Golden arm Chris Woakes claimed three wickets, removing Mohammad Hafeez and Azhar Ali as well as FELICIANO LOPEZ got back to the final of the Swiss Open for the first time in 10 years yesterday. The Spaniard closed out a 4-6 6-3 6-3 victory over Germany’s Dustin Brown. “It’s been a long time since my last final here,” said Lopez. “I have great memories and it’s definitely a great feeling to be in the final.” He’ll face Robin Haase in today’s final after he beat Paul-Henri Mathieu 7-6 7-6.