Hamilton takes pole from ‘hometown’ hero Vettel

Lewis Hamilton has taken his second consecutive pole position for Mercedes AMG F1 team in front of a packed out home crowd for the team.

Qualifying just over tenth of a second quicker than three time World Champion Sebastian Vettel, Hamilton snatched pole position on his final lap of the third qualifying session using the soft Pirelli tyre compound; a compound which has been modified to be a little more durable, and more importantly, safer after what had happened during the British Grand Prix last week. Vettel’s teammate Mark Webber will start from third.

Hamilton held provisional pole throughout the majority of Q3 setting a fast lap in the mid 1:29’s. With just a couple of minutes left in the session, Vettel would take provisional pole position looking before Mercedes would respond to take pole position from the German.
The remaining cars fighting for position in the top ten were somewhat mixed up as teams including Ferrari and McLaren opted to save tyres for tomorrow’s race instead of fighting for track position in qualifying. As such, the Lotus duo of Kimi Raikkonen and Romain Grosjean will start the race from fourth and fifth respectively.

Daniel Ricciardo, who is fighting to prove himself worthy of the vacant Red Bull Racing seat for 2014, continued his string of impressive qualifying performances by putting his Toro Rosso in sixth.

Felipe Massa out-qualified Fernando Alonso for seventh, but the two drivers appear to be on different strategies going into tomorrow’s race and will be an in-team rivalry to watch out for in the early stages of the Grand Prix on Sunday.

McLaren followed the tyre preservation strategy for Jenson Button, resulting in a qualifying position of just ninth place as McLaren continue to lack pack during qualifying. Sauber’s Nico Hulkenberg sits in the tenth and final top ten position after following suit on the tyres front.

The ‘surprise’ dropout of Q2 came in the name of Nico Rosberg when the team did not send their hometown driver out to defend his position in the dying minutes of Q2. The result was that Rosberg was knocked out of the top ten; surprising to many as Mercedes proved with Hamilton that they have what it takes to compete at the front of the pack this weekend. Starting the race from P11, Rosberg will have a hard days’ work ahead of him tomorrow if he wants to win in front of his home fans.

Di Resta, who got off to a slow start in Q1, failed to improve substantially after making it into Q2 and will start from 12th on the grid for Force India whilst teammate Adrian Sutil sits in 15th. The Force India’s are split by the two Mexican drivers in Formula 1 Sergio Perez and Esteban Gutiérrez. Perez’s struggles in the McLaren continue as the car suffered from over steer through both qualifying sessions, forcing the young driver to take a cautious approach to qualifying at the Nürburgring.

Jean-Eric Vergne’s Toro Rosso was the final car eliminated from Q2; a lap time of 1:31.104 would put Vergne in just sixteenth place on the grid, and well off the pace of that set by Daniel Ricciardo who made it safely though to Q3 ahead of Button’s McLaren and Hulkenberg’s Sauber as the chequered flag feel on Q2.

Despite celebrating their 600th career Grand Prix race in Formula 1, the Williams F1 team continues to struggle with both cars failing to make it out of Q1. Valterri Bottas finished the first qualifying session with a fastest lap of 1:31.693, good enough for just P17 whilst teammate Pastor Maldonado finished just behind in P18.

Charles Pic did well to out qualify both Marussia cars and his teammate once more, and will start tomorrow’s race from P19. Behind him is Jules Bianchi and Giedo van der Garde, whilst Max Chilton’s Marussia will start from the 22nd and final place on the grid.

Full qualifying times and results can be found below. The Formula 1 Grosser Preis Santander von Deutschland 2013 starts tomorrow, Sunday July 7th at 14:00 local time.