Rosberg on pole as Hamilton hits more trouble

Nico Rosberg grabbed his sixth pole position of the season at the Hungaroring as an engine fire ended Lewis Hamilton’s qualifying hopes on his first out lap at the start of the session. Hamilton will start the race from the back of the grid.

Red Bull Racing’s Sebastian Vettel will line up alongside Hamilton on the front row, with Williams’ Valtteri Bottas this ahead of Daniel Ricciardo.

Just five minutes in Q1 Hamilton, who was nearing the end of his first out lap, contacted his pit wall to inform them that he had a fire on board his W05. He eventually pulled over at the edge of the pit lane entrance where his car was surrounded by marshals who quickly extinguished the blaze. Mercedes later reported that the engine fire had been caused by a fuel leak.

Hamilton will be joined there by Pastor Maldonado. The Venezuelan driver also failed to set a time during the session after his Lotus ground to a halt at turn 13 on his first out lap.

At the end of Q1 Jules Bianchi put in a great lap to demote Kimi Raikkonen to 17th place. Ferrari had been trying to get the Finn through the Q2 without resorting to the soft Pirelli tyres but the Finn’s medium-tyre best lap of 1:26.792 was not good enough to make it through as Bianchi beat him by six hundredths of a second

Also eliminated in the session, in order behind Raikkonen, Kamui Kobayashi, Max Chilton and Marcus Ericsson.

At the top of the Q1 order was Jean-Eric Vergne who set an impressive 1:24.941 on the soft tyre to finish ahead of Rosberg and Vergne’s Toro Rosso team-mate Daniil Kvyat.

Q2 was less incident-packed, with Rosberg easing through to Q3 in P1 ahead of Vettel, Ricciardo and Bottas.

In danger of being eliminated, however, was Nico Hulkenberg, the only remaining Force India following Sergio Perez’s early exit from the session with a hydraulic problem. With Daniil Kvyat in 10th place and three tenths ahead as the final runs began, Hulkenberg looked to be in trouble.

The German delivered a lap of 1:24.647 to dislodge the young Russian but the Force India driver still did not look secure as Kvyat set personal best times through the first two sectors. However the Russian made a mistake in the final sector, losing control under braking into Turn 12 and sliding off circuit.

The spin left him in 11th, ahead of Adrian Sutil, Perez, Esteban Gutierrez, Romain Grosjean and Bianchi.

Just a Q3 was about to begin, light rain began to fall in the pitlane. Teams rushed to get in a banker on slick tyres but the result was that Rosberg went wide at Turn One on his first run as he ran out of grip and moments later Magnussen lost control in the same spot. The Dane went straight on at the corner and slammed into the tyre barriers at high speed. He was unharmed and soon out of the wrecked car but the session had to be red-flagged as the tyre barrier was rebuilt.

When the session re-started Rosberg seized control, setting a benchmark of 1:23.236 ahead of Vettel and Bottas. The gap to the champion was only two tenths, however. Bottas improved with his final run, jumping into second place with a final lap of 1m23.354s, just 0.118s shy of Rosberg’s time.

Vettel, though, went one better, claiming provisional pole with a time 0.035s ahead of Rosberg’s.

There was no hint of celebration, however, as Rosberg was flying on his final lap. He was 0.2s up after the first sector and he continued to find time across the lap, eventually claiming his sixth pole of the year with a lap of 1:22.715, just under half a second clear of Vettel.

With Bottas third, four hundredths ahead of Ricciardo, fifth place went to Fernando Alonso. Felipe Massa was sixth in the second Williams, ahead of Button and Vergne. The final top-10 places went to Hulkenberg and the unfortunate Magnussen.