Budapest: Lewis Hamilton of Mercedes beat Sebastian Vettel to pole position at the Hungarian Grand Prix. Hamilton was 0.038 seconds faster than the Red Bull driver, while his team-mate Nico Rosberg, finished fourth behind Lotus's Romain Grosjean.
Hamilton said that he was really surprised when the guys told him over the radio that he was on pole today. “It was a good lap but I thought Sebastian had done enough. So it's fantastic - and also to get three pole positions in a row. It's great to start from the front but, like we know, the race is where we score the points. Looking to tomorrow, this is a tough circuit to overtake on but it's also a long run down to the first corner, and both Seb and the Lotus cars will be really quick,” he said, adding that they have a good car but the race will come down to how we use the tyres.
“We are working hard to improve in that area and we had some reasonable long runs yesterday. We'll have to see how it goes because it's going to be tough in these high temperatures.”
I would love to have a real race with the guys around me, a proper battle, and the goal has to be to collect as many points as we can.”
Meanwhile Vettel said, “There wasn’t much missing in that session, so Lewis did a good job. I put a strong lap in and had two sets of new tyres; I was pretty happy with both laps, maybe on the second I was losing out a bit in the middle sector and perhaps I wasn’t aggressive enough, but it’s no help to sit here now and say we should have done this or that. At the end of the day my lap wasn’t quick enough. Mercedes have a very strong qualifying pace.”
“Lewis did an exceptional job today, also if you look at the gap to Nico, you have to be fair and respect that. I would have loved to have been a little bit faster and be on pole, but it still puts us in a great place for tomorrow. We have a good car and good race pace. It’s a shame Mark had a problem with the gears and KERS today, so he wasn’t able to challenge for the front, but still we should have a good race tomorrow and I’m quite confident,” said Vettel.