LEWIS HAMILTON TAKES A COMMANDING 150 th MCLAREN POLE POSITION FOR THE HUNGARIAN GRAND PRIX.
Romain Grosjean with his best qualifying to date will have a front row start in Budapest.
LEWIS: “There is no real secret to Sunday’s race, it is the same as anyone else, You have to keep your head cool and make sure you look after your tyres. Tyre strategy will be important tomorrow, and degradation will be interesting.
I didn’t do any long runs this morning, I did mine yesterday and they were pretty good. The track was a little bit greener yesterday so its difficult to compare. We know Lotus is long through long runs and so is the Red Bull, so we just need to focus on us.
Jenson showed those German GP upgrades are an improvement and hopefully I can show the same thing tomorrow. We have a long race tomorrow so lots can happen, but we need to keep cool.
It has been a really positive weekend so far, we can finally see the upgrades working this weekend, being able to put car in places I previously wasn’t able to,” he reported.
I am always striving for the perfect lap, and to get that is intense and exciting and if you get it right it is incredibly empowering. This weekend we have obviously had pace, we knew it was possible but it was just a case of doing it.
Considering we have had pace all weekend,[missing pole would have been disappointing, so I am happy I have done it.
This is motor racing – we are not saying we are relaxed about it, we know we have a lot of work to do. We need to make sure we start that work this weekend.”
Romain: “We started the weekend coming back from the German GP, which was a bit of disaster. We worked hard, and analysed what went wrong, why I couldn’t get the feeling I had at the start of year.
In final practice it was getting better, and then we found the speed, got back into the car and tried to understand what was wrong with it.
Starting from the front row is special. We know overtaking is difficult so the first job is done. Hopefully tomorrow we will keep our race pace and be able to save our tyres as much as we want and get some good battles with the guy at the front.
I think it was a lot of things together. I think in the last two races we were not where we had to be. We had some signs that things were not going as we wanted. The car was not handling as it should. So I think being second is a bit of a surprise after we struggled, but we improved lap after lap and I think this helped us.”
Normally it is better on high fuel than low fuel so it’s pretty good to be on the front row. We have been working a bit more on qualifying because it is a big key to the race. Hopefully the car will be good in the race. We have saved tyres and hopefully we have a good pace.”
Pos Driver Team Time Gap 1. Lewis Hamilton McLaren-Mercedes 1m20.953s 2. Romain Grosjean Lotus-Renault 1m21.366s + 0.413 3. Sebastian Vettel Red Bull-Renault 1m21.416s + 0.463 4. Jenson Button McLaren-Mercedes 1m21.583s + 0.630 5. Kimi Raikkonen Lotus-Renault 1m21.730s + 0.777 6. Fernando Alonso Ferrari 1m21.844s + 0.891 7. Felipe Massa Ferrari 1m21.900s + 0.947 8. Pastor Maldonado Williams-Renault 1m21.939s + 0.986 9. Bruno Senna Williams-Renault 1m22.343s + 1.390 10. Nico Hulkenberg Force India-Mercedes 1m22.847s + 1.894 Q2 cut-off time: 1m21.697s Gap * 11. Mark Webber Red Bull-Renault 1m21.715s + 0.655 12. Paul di Resta Force India-Mercedes 1m21.813s + 0.753 13. Nico Rosberg Mercedes 1m21.895s + 0.835 14. Sergio Perez Sauber-Ferrari 1m21.895s + 0.835 15. Kamui Kobayashi Sauber-Ferrari 1m22.300s + 1.240 16. Jean-Eric Vergne Toro Rosso-Ferrari 1m22.380s + 1.320 17. Michael Schumacher Mercedes 1m22.723s + 1.663 Q1 cut-off time: 1m22.948s Gap * 18. Daniel Ricciardo Toro Rosso-Ferrari 1m23.250s + 1.456 19. Heikki Kovalainen Caterham-Renault 1m23.576s + 1.782 20. Vitaly Petrov Caterham-Renault 1m24.167s + 2.373 21. Charles Pic Marussia-Cosworth 1m25.244s + 3.450 22. Timo Glock Marussia-Cosworth 1m25.476s + 3.682 23. Pedro de la Rosa HRT-Cosworth 1m25.916s + 4.122 24. Narain Karthikeyan HRT-Cosworth 1m26.178s + 4.384