Lewis Hamilton has claimed his 48th pole position at the Spa Francorchamps circuit in Belgium for the 2015 Belgian Grand Prix.
The 2014 champion has only won once at the legendary circuit which tops many fans list as their favorite. He handedly beat his teammate to pole and Nico Rosberg, having never won at Spa, is hoping the new start procedure will catch Hamilton off guard on Sunday.
Perhaps the Mercedes dominance isn’t difficult to believe with the works team on the front row followed by Force India and Williams but the real head-scratcher is the resurgence of Renault-powered cars of Red Bull and Lotus who both outperformed Ferrari.
Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen failed to start Q3 with a mechanical issue stopping his car on track during the Q2 session while Sebastian Vettel couldn’t manage better than 9th (pre-Grosjean adjusted due to penalty) and that spells a very difficult weekend for the Italian team.
The length of Spa has a way of compounding and exposing weaknesses and it was clear that Mercedes were the team to beat but not many thought Renault-powered cars would take the fight to Ferrari and so far, win. It is, however, a theme this year with Ferrari not doing well at power circuits.
| Pos | Driver | Car | Time | Gap |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Lewis Hamilton | Mercedes | 1m47.197s | – |
| 2 | Nico Rosberg | Mercedes | 1m47.655s | 0.458s |
| 3 | Valtteri Bottas | Williams/Mercedes | 1m48.537s | 1.340s |
| 4 | Romain Grosjean | Lotus/Mercedes | 1m48.561s | 1.364s |
| 5 | Sergio Perez | Force India/Mercedes | 1m48.599s | 1.402s |
| 6 | Daniel Ricciardo | Red Bull/Renault | 1m48.639s | 1.442s |
| 7 | Felipe Massa | Williams/Mercedes | 1m48.685s | 1.488s |
| 8 | Pastor Maldonado | Lotus/Mercedes | 1m48.754s | 1.557s |
| 9 | Sebastian Vettel | Ferrari | 1m48.825s | 1.628s |
| 10 | Carlos Sainz | Toro Rosso/Renault | 1m49.771s | 2.574s |
| 11 | Nico Hulkenberg | Force India/Mercedes | 1m49.121s | – |
| 12 | Daniil Kvyat | Red Bull/Renault | 1m49.228s | – |
| 13 | Marcus Ericsson | Sauber/Ferrari | 1m49.586s | – |
| 14 | Kimi Raikkonen | Ferrari | – | – |
| 15 | Felipe Nasr | Sauber/Ferrari | 1m49.952s | – |
| 16 | Will Stevens | Marussia/Ferrari | 1m52.948s | – |
| 17 | Roberto Merhi | Marussia/Ferrari | 1m53.099s | – |
| 18 | Max Verstappen | Toro Rosso/Renault | – | – |
| 19 | Jenson Button | McLaren/Honda | 1m50.978s | – |
| 20 | Fernando Alonso | McLaren/Honda | 1m51.420s | – |
ZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzz… two 24hour/365 day wind-tunnels, 3x 8-hour shift engineer teams at Mercedes… gee, what a surprise.
And Ferari – grind, crunch… worse audio ever on CNBC… Kimi pushing the white button to get the damn thing off the track… roll on the 30 second beginning tomorrow and then switch off.
That was a very nasty sound wasn’t it? Yikes.
Finally cut the cable cord this week, so no more NBC for me. Loved the split screen synced replay of Nico and Lewis’s laps that they showed on Sky, that really let you see where Lewis was gaining time.
Cant wait to see the race tomorrow, high quality, commercial free from Sky.
I just got sick of paying good money for a lousy service.
I suspect Lewis will cruise the race tomorrow unless rain intervenes.