Hamilton avoids disaster to claim his 82nd pole

LEWIS HAMILTON took pole position for the Brazilian Grand Prix after narrowly escaping a 150mph crash on the very piece of track that helped define his career.

It was at the final corner here at Interlagos — on the final lap of the season’s final race of the 2008 season — that he unforgettably passed Timo Glock’s Toyota in the rain to snatch his first world title. And in qualifying yesterday, with drizzle falling, Hamilton was caught unawares at the same spot. He did not see Williams’s Sergey Sirotkin coming from behind fast, despite also being on a warm-up lap. The world champion, going slowly, took evasive action. But, by turning left, he caused Sirotkin to veer on to the grass to avoid a collision.

‘He wasn’t on a flying lap so I don’t know what his thinking was,’ said Hamilton after taking his 10th pole of the season and 82nd of his career in mixed weather conditions. ‘It was strange and completely unnecessary from Sergey. We all know to keep a gap.’ Sebastian Vettel, who was the second quickest qualifier, 0.093sec off the pace, was called to the stewards for breaking the weighing scales in what appeared to be a bizarre moment of pique.

FIA technical delegate Jo Bauer said: ‘When called in for weighing in Q2, Vettel refused to turn off the engine. The car was pushed on to the scales and weighed with the engine running, which makes it difficult to get a stable result. After weighing he drove off the scales under the car’s own power, and by doing so, he destroyed the scales.’

Reruns showed Vettel agitatedly waving his arms in the cockpit during the weighing process. He also knocked over a cone with the nose of his Ferrari.