No pole record for Lewis as Paul replaces Massa
LEWIS HAMILTON fell short in his bid yesterday to match Michael Schumacher’s pole record after he qualified a disappointing fourth for today’s Hungarian Grand Prix.
Hamilton was handed his first chance of matching Schumacher’s tally of 68 poles, but he was nearly half-a-second adrift of championship rival Sebastian Vettel who stormed to the front spot on the grid at the Hungaroring.
Kimi Raikkonen joins his Ferrari teammate on the front row of the grid with Hamilton’s Mercedes team-mate Valtteri Bottas third.
Hamilton, with his father Anthony watching on from the back of the Mercedes garage, ran wide at Turn 4 during his first attempt at pole and had to abandon his lap.
It left the Briton with one final go to match Schumacher’s record, but after complaining about vibrations on his car throughout Saturday’s session, he finished a distant 0.431 sec off Vettel’s blistering effort.
To make matters worse for Hamilton and indeed his Mercedes team, Raikkonen pipped Bottas with his final throw of the dice as Ferrari secure their second front-row lockout of the season.
It was the perfect retort from Vettel, one point ahead of Hamilton in the title race, after he finished a lowly seventh at the British Grand Prix a fortnight ago following a penultimate-lap puncture.
“It is only Saturday so there is nothing to get from today other than the best position on the grid, but we did that which is great,” Vettel said. “The talk after the last race was a bit too much, so it was good to deliver the answer on the track,”
Britain’s Paul di Resta was handed his first taste of grand prix action in almost four years after he was dramatically called up to replace the unwell Felipe Massa.
Indeed 31-year-old Di Resta, the reserve driver for Williams, was told he’d be filling in for Massa just 90 minutes before qualifying.
The Scot raced at Force India for three years, and today’s race will be his 59th F1 start, but his 11th-hour call-up marked the first time he had turned a Formula One car’s wheel in anger since the season-ending Brazilian Grand Prix in 2013.
Di Resta put a string of commendable laps together and qualified last but one, and within eight-tenths of a second of Lance Stroll in the sister Williams and 2.6 seconds off the pace of the leaders.
It was an impressive effort from Di Resta given his only taste of this year’s faster, more aggressive cars will have been in the team’s simulator at their Oxfordshire base.