Mercedes’ Nico Rosberg has secured pole position for Sunday’s German Grand Prix ahead of team-mate Lewis Hamilton.
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Rosberg was the fastest in all three practice runs but trailed Hamilton in the final of the three qualifying sessions Saturday – after experiencing problems with the throttle at the start of Q3 – until his last lap. Then I lost those [rest of the gap] later on, [in] half a lap.
“It was just at the end of the lap, so that was disappointing, but I’m sure we’ll fix it for tomorrow”. I had the pace today I just didn’t finish it off in the last lap.
The Mercedes twosome staged a nail-biter of a pole position battle with treble world champion Hammy losing out when Rosberg posted a brilliant last-dash lap around the 2.8-mile Hockenheim circuit.
Daniel Ricciardo went third for Red Bull with a late flier that put him less than a tenth behind the Mercedes pair, indicating that the German team may have more of a fight on their hands in Saturday’s qualifying than the opening day of practise had suggested.
“It was one of the best-ever laps, especially considering the circumstances”, Rosberg said.
Lewis Hamilton says he hopes no driver suffers a head injury this season or next in Formula 1 that could have been prevented with the use of the “Halo” cockpit protector as he put his full support behind the device despite being initially critical. “I didn’t really have much of a lock-up, it was subtle, so I didn’t lose any time”. There was no race in Germany a year ago.
“I think on low fuel yesterday Mercedes had a pretty big buffer over everyone and on long run pace we looked closer”, said Ricciardo.
Rosberg was soon out again on a virtually clear track and retook the lead with his flying lap, outpacing his team-mate’s first run by 0.123 seconds.
Elsewhere, Fernando Alonso was ninth for McLaren while his team-mate Jenson Button appeared to be struggling with the handling of his vehicle and was only 19th in the order.
Red Bull also qualified comfortably ahead of Ferrari drivers Kimi Raikkonen and Sebastian Vettel.
Dany Kvyat turned in another shocker of a qualifying session for Toro Rosso; since his demotion from the big boys of Red Bull, he’s seemed a touch stunned, and hasn’t shown a glimmer of a reason why the bosses ought to give him his old job back at any point soon.
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“We might have different tyres available for us for the race and, hopefully, that makes it interesting”.
