Rosberg pips Hamilton to pole position in Bahrain // Mercedes lead the way in the desert, with Williams close behind
Published by Christine
Lewis Hamilton led all of the practice sessions building up to qualifying in Bahrain, but when it came to the crunch, he didn’t quite have enough to take pole position. The Mercedes pair were untouchable throughout and pole was always going to be one of them. Rosberg set the provisional time, and Hamilton ran wide on his last lap, so both abandoned their final runs, handing Nico his first pole of the year.
Meanwhile, in the first session Adrian Sutil and Pastor Maldonado dropped out with the backmarker four. For Lotus, it was just like last week, with Romain Grosjean through to Q2 but getting no higher than one place above his teammate.
Sebastian Vettel was the big surprise, dropping out in Q2 in 11th, not at all happy with the downshifting in the car. Daniel Ricciardo qualified third, best of the rest, but takes a ten place grid drop from that Malaysia unsafe release.
Finally, the highlights for the rest of the top ten were Valtteri Bottas and Sergio Pérez who finished fourth and fifth respectively, both in the hunt for a podium position in the race tomorrow.
