Kimi Antonelli has beaten both Ferraris by a tenth and three-quarters to take pole position for the British Grand Prix. The championship leader found an improvement on his final lap to go ahead of Charles Leclerc to secure his fifth pole of the season. Leclerc put his Ferrari a quarter of a second ahead of his Ferrari teammate Lewis Hamilton.<\/p>\n
Antonelli looked strong on Saturday, where he overtook Hamilton early on to take victory in the sprint race and after being beaten by the seven-time champion in sprint qualifying on Friday, the Italian reasserted Mercedes\u2019 advantage to secure his fifth Grand Prix pole of the season.<\/p>\n
However, he was a bit nervous about his ability to take pole after Mercedes had sent him out first on the final run in Q3, rather than the more preferable position of towards the end. He effectively settled the pole fight early by improving his own benchmark by a further two tenths.<\/p>\n
Leclerc hadn\u2019t managed to out-qualify Hamilton for two months, having admitted to struggling with confidence in his Ferrari. Hamilton put his Ferrari just under three hundredths faster than his former teammate George Russell.<\/p>\n
The eight-time pole sitter was unable to find the same time he managed on Friday to secure another pole at Silverstone. But for Russell, it was another setback in his fight and the growing strength of his teammate as they both fight for the championship.<\/p>\n
Russell was a provisional second going into the final laps but was leapfrogged by the Ferraris, consigning Antonelli’s nearest title challenger to fourth in the second Mercedes. But it could have been far worse for Russell, whose Mercedes required repairs in Q1 after he broke its front wing against the barriers after sliding off the road at Luffield.<\/p>\n
Mercedes had yet to be defeated in grand prix qualifying this year, and a surprisingly strong pole lap from Hamilton in sprint qualifying suggested the Silver Arrows’ streak could be broken in Silverstone.<\/p>\n
The Ferraris had still looked quick in the first part of qualifying, but Antonelli moved to the top of the order in Q2 and then really upped the ante when he lapped two tenths quicker than his rivals on his first lap in Q3.<\/p>\n
Antonelli admitted afterwards: “A bit stressed because I never like going first for the last run! The last lap was very tidy. I have to be honest, it came all together. It was very tricky with the wind because it was very gusty and unpredictable.<\/p>\n
Hamilton said, “Charles has been making good improvements, and we just didn’t have the pace of the Mercedes, which has been a thing for a while. But we are slowly closing the gap and to have both of us up here is great for the team.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhether or not we can fully keep up with Kimi, we will see but hopefully we can play with the strategy and work as a team to try to topple them. We will do our best for sure.\u201d<\/p>\n
He had already extended his championship lead still further with victory in the sprint, and their starting positions give Russell an uphill struggle as he seeks to take his first win at his home race. Leaving the pits for his final lap, Antonelli complained about being the first driver to run, but he need not have worried.<\/p>\n
Isack Hadjar put his Red Bull fifth, the Frenchman having his best qualifying of the season as he went just over a tenth faster than Lando Norris, last year\u2019s race winner, managing to split the Red Bulls after going a hundred and a half faster than Max Verstappen.<\/p>\n
McLaren never appeared to be in the fight for pole, Oscar Piastri going four hundredths behind the Red Bull while it was another strong session for sister team Racing Bull\u2019s. Arvid Lindblad was four tenths faster than teammate Liam Lawson as they completed the top ten.<\/p>\n
Gabriel Bortoletto missed out on progressing to Q3 by just over three hundredths as he put his Audi six tenths ahead of Pierre Gasly. The Frenchman split the Audis as he went, just under a hundredth and a half faster than Nico Hulkenberg, with Ollie Bearman nearly four and a half hundredths behind.<\/p>\n
Gasly had been noted for impeding; his teammate Franco Colapinto sparked a brief yellow flag after going off at Becketts, meaning Q1 was a difficult session for Alpine.<\/p>\n
The Williams duo was slowest in Q2, Carlos Sainz nearly a tenth and a quarter behind Bearman as he went over seven tenths faster than Alex Albon, the lowest of the British-born drivers on the grid. Albon had only made it out of Q1 by going just over four hundredths.<\/p>\n
Esteban Ocon was fastest of those knocked out in Q1, the Haas driver going over half a second faster than the Cadillac of Valtteri Bottas. The Finn was nearly a tenth faster than Colapinto, as the Alpine driver split the American team as he went over a tenth faster than Sergio Perez.<\/p>\n
Aston Martin completed the field, Lance Stroll out-qualifying Fernando Alonso by over a quarter of a second.<\/p>\n
Kimi Antonelli has beaten both Ferraris by a tenth and three-quarters to take pole position for the British Grand Prix. The championship leader found an improvement on his final lap to go ahead of Charles Leclerc to secure his fifth pole of the season. Leclerc put his Ferrari a quarter of a second ahead of<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":15456,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[2339,319,320,338,390,625,709,2252,1298,1440,1597,1598,1829,1843,2068,2079],"class_list":["post-16148","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-charles-leclerc","tag-england","tag-ferrari","tag-kimi-antonelli","tag-mercedes","tag-northamptonshire","tag-qualifying","tag-qualifying-report","tag-silverstone","tag-lewis-hamilton","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16148","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=16148"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16148\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16149,"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16148\/revisions\/16149"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15456"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16148"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16148"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16148"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}