Lewis Hamilton has beaten Kimi Antonelli by a hundredth to secure sprint pole at the British Grand Prix. The nine-time winner at Silverstone set a 28.378 to secure his eighth pole in any format at Silverstone. Hamilton, going into the weekend, had played down expectations this weekend but managed to pip the Mercedes.<\/p>\n
The Ferrari driver has seemed more comfortable at Ferrari after the first Grand Prix win in Barcelona three weeks ago, and once again made a statement as to why he could be a dark horse in this championship. Max Verstappen put his Red Bull third, going six thousandths ahead of Charles Leclerc.<\/p>\n
Hamilton goes into this weekend looking for a record-extending tenth Grand Prix win at Silverstone, and Sprint Qualifying appeared to be another huge statement as he topped every session on Friday. Power key at Silverstone as the Ferrari continued their resurgence this season.<\/p>\n
Hamilton insists he is not thinking about winning a record eighth world crown, but his performance here will do little to dampen a growing feeling that he is in the hunt for this year’s title.<\/p>\n
SQ3 boiled down to a single lap shoot-out where Hamilton surged ahead by a hundred over Antonelli with Verstappen three-tenths off as the Red Bull driver edged out Leclerc. George Russell could only manage fifth; he appeared to lose two-tenths on his final attempt in SQ3. Antonelli had laid down the early benchmark, but Hamilton at Silverstone can never be counted out as he produced another special lap.<\/p>\n
Hamilton said, \u201cWe’re ahead of a Mercedes and the Red Bull; they have so much power these guys. They’ve been doing amazing all year, the boys in blue (Mercedes) this weekend, these champs. But my team won’t let up, they’ll keep pushing, and that’s what I’m so proud of.\u201d<\/p>\n
Antonelli, who leads Russell by forty points and Hamilton by a further six points in the Drivers’ Championship, had looked the more comfortable of the two Mercedes drivers on Friday but fell narrowly short of ensuring a Silver Arrow pole.<\/p>\n
He added, \u201cFerrari have done an incredible step forward, so definitely it’s going to be very tough. Plus, Lewis is in great form, but that’s good, we like the challenge and we’ll try to make the best out of it. Of course, (I can fight for the win tomorrow), we’ll go for it and we’ll try to do our best. It’s not going to be easy, but everything is on the table to do well.\u201d<\/p>\n
Russell was seven thousandths ahead of the McLarens; the world champions have struggled this season at circuits where aerodynamic efficiency is so important. Lando Norris was nearly four hundredths faster than his teammate Oscar Piastri, as the two McLarens appeared to lack the pace to fight for pole.<\/p>\n
Norris, who carried car damage through the first two segments before repairs ahead of SQ3, eventually pipped teammate Piastri to sixth, but the McLaren duo, whose cars are running in throwback white and green livery this weekend, wound up four tenths off the pace.<\/p>\n
Isack Hadjar looked to have the edge over Verstappen from practice through to SQ2, but when it came down to the final runs in SQ3 on the soft tyres, the Frenchman edged out Verstappen early on, but finished a tenth off. In what have become ultra-competitive qualifying sessions this season, that meant he could only manage eighth.<\/p>\n
Hadjar was nearly a tenth ahead of the sister Racing Bulls, with Liam Lawson going four tenths faster than his teammate Arvid Lindblad as they competed the top ten continuing their consistency of getting through to SQ3 or Q3 in recent races.<\/p>\n
Pierre Gasly missed out on SQ3 by nearly a tenth, the Frenchman nearly two tenths faster than the Audi\u2019s with Gabriel Bortoleto going nearly four tenths ahead of his teammate Nico Hulkenberg, who scored his first podium here a year ago. The two Williams completed those knocked out in SQ2, Carlos Sainz half a tenth faster than Alex Albon.<\/p>\n
Ollie Bearman was the slowest Brit in qualifying; the Englishman was knocked out by his countryman Albon by a hundredth. Bearman however comfortably faster by six tenths ahead of Haas teammate Esteban Ocon.<\/p>\n
As usual, the Cadillac and Aston Martin\u2019s competing the field Sergio Perez going over half a tenth faster than teammate Valtteri Bottas, with Fernando Alonso nearly nine tenths behind the Finn and ahead of teammate Lance Stroll by nearly seven hundredths.<\/p>\n
Lewis Hamilton has beaten Kimi Antonelli by a hundredth to secure sprint pole at the British Grand Prix. The nine-time winner at Silverstone set a 28.378 to secure his eighth pole in any format at Silverstone. Hamilton, going into the weekend, had played down expectations this weekend but managed to pip the Mercedes. The Ferrari<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":15458,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[2339,319,320,338,625,709,2252,1283,1440,1597,1598,1637,2344,1642,1829,1843,1881,1882,2225,2068,2079],"class_list":["post-16135","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-race-reports","tag-2339","tag-british-gp","tag-british-grand-prix","tag-buckinghamshire","tag-england","tag-ferrari","tag-kimi-antonelli","tag-max-verstappen","tag-northamptonshire","tag-qualifying","tag-qualifying-report","tag-red-bull","tag-red-bull-ford","tag-red-bull-racing","tag-silverstone","tag-lewis-hamilton","tag-sprint","tag-sprint-qualifying","tag-sprint-qualifying-report","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16135","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16135"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16135\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16136,"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16135\/revisions\/16136"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15458"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16135"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16135"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}