Nico Rosberg has secured pole position for the Canadian Grand Prix after producing a fine final lap in qualifying to deny his teammate Lewis Hamilton in the final stage of the session today.
Hamilton had dominated proceedings in Montreal across the course of the weekend, but a mistake on his final lap heading into turn eighth meant that he had to settle for second place. Rosberg’s margin of victory was less than one-tenth of a second.
Qualifying began with just 21 cars vying for the 16 spots in Q2 after Esteban Gutierrez’s crash in practice forced Sauber to change his chassis. Valtteri Bottas was soon out on track in Q1, posting the first lap time of 1:18.270, but this benchmark did not last long. Teammate Felipe Massa was able to go half a second faster and occupied top spot until Nico Rosberg came through to put Mercedes back up into first place.
Lewis Hamilton took his time to warm things up having made a mistake at turn one on his first timed lap. Once he got his act together, the Briton moved up into first place by two-tenths of a second. Bottas improved to move back ahead of his teammate in third place, but Kimi Raikkonen appeared to be struggling. The Finn had to save his car from spinning twice, and Sergio Perez also pushed too hard and was lucky not to hit the wall.
At the bottom of the order, Pastor Maldonado dropped out in Q1 for the sixth time this season when he pulled over at the side of the track with a problem on his car. Marcus Ericsson’s session also came to an abrupt end when he binned his car at turn nine, bringing out the red flag with 16 seconds left on the clock. As a result, the session did not restart, meaning that Max Chilton could not improve his time and dropped out alongside his teammate and Caterham’s Kamui Kobayashi.
Q2 began on time with Adrian Sutil being the first driver to venture out on track. He was soon followed by the rest of the runners, who were running on super-soft tires in order to have a shot of making it into Q3. Felipe Massa was the early leader in the session ahead of current teammate, Valtteri Bottas, and former teammate Fernando Alonso. The two Mercedes drivers headed out later on, but neither Hamilton nor Rosberg could topple Massa with their initial efforts.
With three minutes to go, the drivers began their final runs. Sergio Perez managed to improve and jump up to 12th place with his first lap, but Adrian Sutil was still left languishing down in 16th and quite a way off the rest of the field. Bottas improved his time to move into second place behind his teammate, only for the Mercedes drivers to go first and second late on with Hamilton ahead of Rosberg. Jean-Eric Vergne produced a late lap to get through, dumping Hulkenberg and Magnussen out alongside Perez, Grosjean, Kvyat and Sutil.
The final session saw Bottas head out early in order to get some clear air, and set the first benchmark of 1:15.550 for the rest of the field to follow. Nico Rosberg was the first Mercedes to cross the line and better it, going some six-tenths quicker, and although Hamilton managed to beat Bottas, he fell 0.068 seconds short of his teammate. With the German on provisional pole, Hamilton had one final chance to claim his fifth pole of the year.
On the final runs, both Rosberg and Hamilton made marginal improvements, but the Briton just could not find the pace to better his teammate’s lap, meaning that he had to settle for second place. Sebastian Vettel produced a fine final flyer to qualify third ahead of the Williams pair of Valtteri Bottas and Felipe Massa. Daniel Ricciardo qualified sixth ahead of Alonso and Vergne, whilst Jenson Button and Kimi Raikkonen rounded out the top ten.
After dominating proceedings in practice, Hamilton will unquestionably be frustrated not to have converted this form into a fifth pole position of the season. With an all-Mercedes front row, though, the stage is set for yet another fascinating battle between Hamilton and Rosberg in the race on Sunday.
