Monza : Defending world champion Lewis Hamilton continued to reign supreme in one-lap speed on Saturday when he secured his 11th pole position in 12 races for Mercedes by topping qualifying for Sunday’s Italian Grand Prix.
The 30-year-old Briton powered around the high-speed Autodromo Nazional in warm sunshine to clock a best lap of one minute and 23.383 seconds and finish three-tenths clear of a resurgent Kimi Raikkonen, who was cheered to the flag in his Ferrari. The Finn, inspired by the tifosi packed into the main grandstand opposite the Ferrari pits, produced a flying late effort to beat his team-mate Sebastian Vettel, who wound up third.
Raikkonen secured his first front row start for Ferrari since the 2009 Monaco Grand Prix.
The Ferrari revival was bad news for Hamilton’s Mercedes team-mate Nico Rosberg who had to change engines before the session.
The German, who trails Hamilton by 28 points in the standings, reverted to an older power-unit and finished fourth, his worst qualifying result of the year.
For Hamilton, it was a seventh straight pole, enabling him to emulate Michael Schumacher, the last driver to achieve the feat in 2000-01. The record is held by Ayrton Senna with eight in 1989. It was Hamilton’s 49th career pole and signalled his 20th front row start in succession. His success also extended Mercedes’ run to 23 poles, one short of the record set by the Williams team in 1993. Felipe Massa was fifth fastest ahead of his Williams team-mate Valtteri Bottas, Mexican Sergio Perez of Force India and Frenchman Romain Grosjean of Lotus.
Nico Hulkenberg was ninth for Force India ahead of Swede Marcus Ericsson of Sauber.
Force India witnessed a relatively good outing with Sergio Perez and Nico Hulkenberg finishing seventh and ninth respectively in the qualifying session. Both Perez and Hulkenberg made it to the third qualifying session. While Perez recorded his best timing of 1:24.626s in the final qualifying session, Hulkenberg was a tad slow clocking 1:25.317s in Q3. Force India’s Hulkenberg was hit by technical woes and finished ninth, with Sauber’s Marcus Ericsson – penalised three grid places for blocking Hulkenberg in Q1 – completing the top ten. Perez was relatively satisfied with his outing. —AGENCIES
