Hamilton takes pole position in front of Silverstone home crowd - Ricciardo drops out in first session
Published by Christine
Lewis Hamilton was comfortably quickest around the Silverstone track as he secured his fifth British GP pole position. He was half a second up on next best Kimi Räikkönen, who in turn had a couple of tenths on Sebastian Vettel. Valtteri Bottas was fourth, with a five place gearbox penalty to take.
Daniel Ricciardo, who also had a gearbox penalty hanging over him, stopped out on track during Q1, which ended his running and also brought out the red flags whilst his car was recovered. Drivers had started their runs on the intermediate tyre, but a hardy few switched to the dry compounds – Fernando Alonso did that, narrowly beat the chequered flag as he crossed the line and continued to set the fastest lap time of Q1. Of course that only got him into Q2, and he has heft penalties to take once again this weekend, but boy, the crowd loved to see him at the top of the timesheets.
Elsewhere, Kevin Magnussen dropped out in Q1, whilst Romain Grosjean dragged his Haas into the top ten. The Williams pair dropped out early, but Stoffel Vandoorne impressed with ninth place, and Nico Hülkenberg also shone with sixth.
