Monte Carlo: Nico Rosberg claimed pole position for Sunday's Monaco Grand Prix, while his Mercedes team-mate Lewis Hailton will start second. Rosberg delivered a fastest lap of one minute and 13.876 seconds in the final seconds of a rain-hit session to outpace 2008 world champion Hamilton by 0.091 seconds.
It was Rosberg's third successive pole. "You know, it's always nice to hear statistics like that," Rosberg said, adding, "But it doesn't change much for tomorrow. Of course, I'm very happy.
Hamilton, who has been outpaced by Rosberg in all three practice sessions as well as qualifying, said: "I've been struggling all weekend and my pace has been slacking. I've struggled with the car and this is the first time that's happened since 2005. It's been a difficult weekend so I'm happy to have been able to lock out the front row for the team. It's been a massive improvement for me."
Meanwhile World Champion and Red Bull driver Sebastian Vettel, who finished third in the qualifying said, “I was a bit annoyed with my flying lap in Q3; I think I maybe pushed a bit too hard here and there. The start of the lap wasn’t bad, but also it wasn’t great; with hindsight I should have gone for two flying laps at the start of Q3 and not one, but I decided for that. I thought the tyres would be good enough for the first lap. I have been struggling all weekend, but in the end it was tight. Pole was probably possible today, but we are third. I think with the Mercedes in front, it was expected that they would be strong. We have a good race car and should be able to do well from there tomorrow.”
Red Bull's Mark Webber, who finished fourth, said, “Yeah I’m pretty happy with that. It’s very easy to be towards the back when you have a disruptive session with those conditions, but we managed to survive all the tricky sections and put together a reasonably tidy effort. You can always look at timings later and think you could have done things differently, but in the heat of the moment you make the decision as to what you think is right and overall it wasn’t too bad. The conditions are changing and the tyres are tricky, so starting on the second row here is not bad. It’s a long race and a lot of strategy can unfold, so we’ll see what we can do from there.”