Hamilton cruises into pole as McLaren implode
Champion pips Bottas to secure Mercedes one-two Boullier’s future in doubt as British team humiliated
Lewis Hamilton put his Mercedes on pole position for today’s French Grand Prix as the crisis at his old team McLaren took another miserable twist.
Hamilton stormed to the 75th pole of his career on Formula One’s first visit to France in a decade with a dominant display at the Paul Ricard Circuit.
The British driver saw off his teammate Valtteri Bottas by more than a tenth of a second, while Sebastian Vettel, whom he trails by a single championship point, finished in third, four-tenths back.
But Fernando Alonso and Stoffel Vandoorne qualified only 16th and 18th of the 20 runners on another humiliating day for the failing McLaren team.
Eric Boullier, their racing director, insists he will not resign, but the decision could soon be taken out of his hands following another abject display from the team he has presided over since 2014. Boullier, 44, was pulled from McLaren’s media schedule last night. Zak Brown, McLaren’s American chief executive, said Boullier was in an engineers’ briefing, but then refused to confirm whether he would be sacked.
“I am not going to get into any personnel changes,” Brown said. “We have a team of 800 people, and Eric is a valued member. But clearly we have to identify why we have missed this year’s development targets on the car.”
McLaren’s already troubled season descended into chaos earlier this week when a disgruntled member of staff described the atmosphere at their Woking headquarters as “toxic”, branded the team’s hierarchy as “clueless”, and revealed staff are rewarded with small chocolate bars for their gruelling work. McLaren’s managing director Jonathan Neale sought to reassure his divided 800 staff by sending an email in response to what he viewed as an attack on the British team on Friday morning.
In it, it is understood Neale blamed the outspoken employee for acting divisively, and urged the factory to pull together. The team, however, appears to be falling apart.
Alonso and Vandoorne were dumped out of qualifying at the first hurdle, and ended up three seconds slower than Hamilton. They were two seconds adrift of the Red Bull cars, who use the same Renault engine, and who Brown vowed McLaren would rival this term.
McLaren are sliding further down the grid. Indeed only Williams, another of Britain’s former giants, ensured their McLaren cars will not occupy the final row for today’s race.
Alonso, 36, is out of contract at the end of the season, and, aside from the £20million he will bank for occupying the McLaren cockpit, it is difficult to see why he would want to continue.
“[It is] normality,” Alonso said. “On the personal side I’m trying to do everything possible.”
Hamilton has enjoyed the bulk of his success since leaving McLaren to join Mercedes. Here, armed with a new engine, he made no mistake in fending off the challenge from team-mate Bottas as Mercedes secured an ominous front-row lockout.
“It was a really simple session to be honest,” Hamilton said. “It could always be better, but I am really happy to have the pole.
“You can see how close it is between all of the teams here so it’s really great to have this result, and the one-two for Mercedes.”
Rookie Charles Leclerc, 20, impressed again. The Monaco-born driver hauled his Sauber into the third round of qualifying and he will start eighth. Leclerc is on the books at Ferrari and, on the evidence of his displays this year, is surely the leading contender to oust Kimi Raikkonen at the Scuderia next year.
‘It was a really simple session to be honest. I’m really happy to have the pole position’