Nuerburgring: Lewis Hamilton of Mercedes edged past three-time World Champion Sebastian Vettel of Red Pull for the pole position at the German Grand Prix here on Saturday qualifying. This was Mercedes first pole position since 1954.
Hamilton set the fastest qualifying time on Saturday of 1 minute, 29.398 seconds. Vettel had dominated the last two practice sessions but ended up .103 seconds behind Hamilton, who gained his 29th career pole.
Lewis Hamilton said after the qualifying that he was very proud to put the car on pole for Mercedes-Benz. “I have been with Mercedes for a long time and it's a great result for us to achieve pole here in Germany. I'm a little bit overwhelmed, to be honest, because I have been struggling since first practice this weekend. We were so far off this morning that we took the set-up back to where we started, tried to analyse everything and just worked really hard to improve it,” he said.
Meanwhile Vettel said, “Congratulations to Lewis on pole. It was very tight today, I tried everything. The car felt fine; I was struggling a little bit this afternoon in the first sector, I was losing time there and then trying to catch up. Unfortunately it wasn’t enough, but it looks like we are a bit closer to the Mercedes here than we were in Silverstone, so I think we made some progress and can have confidence for tomorrow. We had a good run yesterday looking at the race, so I think we have done our homework. We have put the car on the first row; it wasn’t quite enough for pole position, but we should have a good race from there tomorrow.”
Mark Webber, who took the third spot, said, “I was actually happy with third position today, as it was very sensitive out there. We lost a little bit in the first sector and struggled to find the rhythm that we had had there in P3, but we know there was a shift in track temp and it pulled everyone together a bit, at least for the short runs. With the long runs, we’re happy with the car, so we’re in a good position to put pressure on for the race victory tomorrow.”