It looked as if Manor had got through to Q2 right up until the dying moments, but good laps for Button, Sainz and Renault’s Jolyon Palmer left Pascal Wehrlein – who had been 13th fastest after the opening runs – eliminated in 18th.
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Raikkonen and fellow Ferrari driver Sebastian Vettel were on the supersofts, and the effect was obvious, with both cars responding well to the added speed.
Indeed, should Hamilton want to win, it is probable that he will have to overtake Rosberg at a later stage in the race with the odds of a collision between the pair becoming ever greater. Jim Clark (above) and Jacky Ickx lead the way with four.
“The procedure now would be to simply red-flag any time that there’s a double-waved yellow flag, then there will be no discussion”, Charlie Whiting, the governing International Automobile Federation’s (FIA) Formula One race director, told reporters at the Hockenheim circuit on Friday.
Home favourite Rosberg, who is six points behind Hamilton in the title race, will now head into qualifying later on Saturday having topped all three practice sessions at Hockenheim.
Rosberg aborted his first lap of that session, allowing Hamilton to snatch provisional pole.
“Yes! Where is everyone?” Carrying two laps more fuel than Hamilton, Rosberg’s 1:14.363 was 0.123 faster than the sister W07 could manage. “It was a great lap, but I also had extra fuel just in case I needed to go again and do a third lap”.
Hamilton was beaten to pole by Rosberg in Budapest a week ago only to win the race after a quicker getaway and take the lead of the world championship for the first time in 2016.
“I’ve been driving exactly the same as in the previous part of the year, I’ve just not had a gearbox failure or engine problems, which has been nice”.
“Pole was definitely on”. That’s it. It’s the only change, but it doesn’t change much for me. Ricciardo, Raikkonen, Verstappen and Vettel all used the super soft compound but were still no match for the Mercedes drivers and ended up in that order behind Rosberg. Max Verstappen (Red Bull) +0.471s 5.
Ferrari lost their design chief James Allison this week.
The four-times world champion, whose team announced a split with highly-regarded technical director James Allison on Wednesday (Thursday NZT), closed the gap to the Mercedes drivers in the afternoon but was still 0.594 seconds adrift of Rosberg.
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Though Rosberg has been quicker throughout the weekend Hamilton thinks he had the pace to beat his teammate. We had a fairly straightforward two sessions today. A lock-up in the middle sector wrecked the defending champion’s chances of seizing pole back again, so it’s a German on pole in Germany.
