With only moments of the session remaining Hamilton appeared to snatch pole from Rosberg after posting the fastest time of the weekend.
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Nico Rosberg says there is no secret formula to his recent qualifying resurgence after beating Lewis Hamilton to a sixth consecutive pole position in Abu Dhabi.
Hamilton and team-mate Nico Rosberg topped a session apiece on Friday at Yas Marina but the reigning world champion is not completely happy with his longer runs from an afternoon session dominated by heavier levels of degradation than expected.
Sergio Perez was a surprise third in his Force India, setting a time of 1:42.610, but the Mexican’s session was curtailed early by a brake problem. He has started the last five races from pole and, having won the last two races in Mexico and Brazil, is gunning for a hat-trick of wins.
“It’s not a revival and we haven’t reinvented anything”.
“Before it was close in the other direction, now it’s close in this direction”, Rosberg explained.
Vettel dropped out in Q1, although the German was quick to allay any fears over his Ferrari and admitted his early elimination was purely down to bad strategy.
Vettel was the first on the frontrunners to complete a timed lap with over 15 minutes gone, but the Ferrari driver was outpaced by teammate Raikkonen right away, as the Finn set a new benchmark with a 1:43.219 lap, almost a full second quicker than Vettel at the time.
McLaren’s Jenson Button was 13th, one place and 0.092secs ahead of team-mate Fernando Alonso.
“We’ve been working really hard to make some changes, we’ve had to take something off the vehicle but Nico was just really quick today. I disadvantaged myself a little bit maybe with one of the things I took off the auto but I have tried to get around it. At the end of the day I can live with it”.
Pastor Maldonado was 10th for Lotus, whose participation in the event was only confirmed after F1 commercial ringmaster Bernie Ecclestone paid their expenses. I’m a lot more comfortable in the beginning of the race.
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An abandoned soft-tyre lap from Vettel due to a power issue mean’t the four-times champion couldn’t improve and fell into the drop zone.
