Rosberg, Hamilton qualify 1-2 in Montreal
MONTREAL— With more than 100,000 race fans expected to jam themselves into Le Circuit Gilles Villeneuve Sunday on what is forecast to be a warm and sunny day, the 45th Grand Prix du Canada promises to be everything its promoters are hoping for — and maybe even more.
The season to date has been dominated by Mercedes F1 Silver Arrows drivers Nico Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton and they didn’t disappoint during a spectacular qualifying session Saturday that also saw fourtime world champion Sebastian Vettel start to show his stuff after a sluggish start to the season.
Rosberg and Hamilton will start beside each other on the front row Sunday afternoon after Rosberg beat his teammate to pole position Saturday by a mere 0.079 seconds.
His fastest lap — one minute, 14.874 seconds (209.680 km/h around the 4.361-kilometre racetrack) — was just that much quicker than Hamilton’s 1:14.953.
Rosberg, who’s on a roll lately — he won the pole at the last race in Monaco and then went on to win — snatched the top spot away from Hamilton in the late stages of qualifying. Hamilton had dominated practice all weekend and was fastest of the 21 drivers who’d attempted to qualify during the first two of three knockout sessions.
But in the last 10 minutes of the hour-long qualifying, when the field had been cut down to the fastest 10, Rosberg cut loose with a wicked quick lap and Hamilton simply couldn’t match it.
“Nico did a fantastic job today,” said Hamilton, who has won three of the six Canadian Grand Prix races since breaking into F1 in 2007. “It’s great for the team.”
Rosberg, who won his third pole of the season (his first in Canada), gave Mercedes, which has dominated the F1 constructors’ championship, its seventh pole position in seven races. He and Hamilton qualified together on the front row for the fourth time. It also marks the third consecutive race Mercedes has started 1-2.
What added spice to the qualifying session, however, was the late charge put on by Vettel, who put his Infiniti Red Bull Racing car third on the grid.
There has been bad blood between Rosberg and Hamilton going back two races to the grand prix in Spain. Both Mercedes adviser Niki Lauda and team manager Toto Wolff addressed the issue with reporters this week but, for his part, Hamilton has said it’s been overblown and went out of his way on several occasions Saturday to praise his teammate.
Asked if not being on pole was going to be a bother, Hamilton said: “It’s not (going to be) that easy, with Nico being so fast, so overtaking is going to be very difficult, to overtake the same car as mine — especially when we’re so close in pace. So we’ll do what we can, but the thing tomorrow is to try to make sure we get as many points as we can.”
Wolff said earlier the team’s main goal is to win the constructors’ championship. After that, they will concentrate on the drivers’ title.
Hamilton seems to have gotten the message. Given several opportunities to reciprocate in kind on Saturday, Rosberg passed.