VETTEL TAKES POLE AS LEWIS SUFFERS

Lewis Hamilton’s hopes of retaining his world championship were dealt a huge blow in Germany yesterday after he qualified a lowly 15th following a mechanical failure, while his rival Sebastian Vettel stormed to pole position.

Ferrari driver Vettel delivered a blistering lap in the dying moments of qualifying to see off the competition from Hamilton’s Mercedes team-mate Valtteri Bottas and take the front slot on the grid by 0.204 seconds. Kimi Raikkonen qualified third in the sister Ferrari.

Vettel’s breathless lap was greeted by huge cheers from the Hockenheim crowd, with the German now the overwhelming favourite to extend his championship lead over Hamilton.

Hamilton, eight points adrift of Vettel, reported over the radio that he couldn’t change gear, and moments later he was told to stop his car to prevent further damage.

The defending champion had already posted a time quick enough to make it through to the second phase, so, at first, he resisted. “No, I don’t want to,” he said.

Hamilton’s hope was that he’d be able to get his car back to the garage to afford his team time to fix the problem. But after ace engineer Pete Bonnington demanded he pull off the track, Hamilton obliged.

In dramatic scenes, the Englishman then attempted to push his Mercedes car back to the garage. Having stopped at turn 10, however, and with a third of the 2.8-mile circuit still to complete before he reached the pits, it dawned on the Briton that his desperate attempts would be in vain.

“I didn’t really understand exactly what had happened so in my mind I was thinking, ‘Get the car back to the track’, but they asked me to turn the car off,” Hamilton explained. “I jumped out and wanted to push it back but it was so far to go.”