Lewis Hamilton on pole for Spanish Grand Prix as Mercedes lock-out front row

Mercedes’ two racers will start the race in the front row of the grid with Valtteri Bottas in second and Max Verstappen third.

Six-time world champion Hamilton will start from pole position for the 92nd time in his career, with Mercedes extending their run of front row lock-outs to four races.

He crossed the line with a time of 1:15:584, six-hundredths of a second ahead of Bottas and nearly a second faster than Verstappen.

Sebastian Vettel’s Ferrari struggled once again – the four-time champion failed to reach Q3 for the third time this season and will start from 11th.

Q1

The first qualifying session got underway at the Circuit de Catalunya with Sergio Perez back at Racing Point after recovering from coronavirus. The Williams pair of Nicholas Latifi and George Russell were out on track first.

Latifi was the first driver to start a banker lap and crossed the line with a time of 1:19.231 with his Williams teammate Russell down by three-tenths.

The drivers started to pour out from the pit-lane with Hamilton and Bottas leading a pack of seven cars out from the pit-lane.

Verstappen set an early time of 1:17.415 with Bottas going two-thousandths of a second quicker than the Red Bull driver but it was Hamilton that gained the lead by three-tenths.

With five minutes to go in the first qualifying session, Hamilton topped the timings with a time of 1:17.037 with the Racing Point pair of Sergio Perez and Lance Stroll in second and third.

The drivers eliminated after the first qualifying session were the two Haas drives, Kevin Magnussen and Romain Grosjean, as well as Russell, Latifi and Antonio Giovinazzi.

Q2

The two Mercedes drivers were out on track first to set their lap times with the rest of the 15 runners sat in the pit-lane waiting for a reasonable gap.

Bottas set an early lap-time of 1:16.152 with Hamilton crossing the line two-tenths faster than his teammate.

With five minutes left in the session, Hamilton topped the timings once again with Bottas two-tenths back in second and Verstappen five-tenths back in third.

Everyone apart from the top three of Hamilton, Bottas and Verstappen went out on track to improve their lap-times to get through to Q3.

Leclerc couldn’t improve on his time, Perez went fifth fastest and most of the other drivers could not improve with Pierre Gasly – the Frenchman’s time of 1:16:800 knocked Vettel out of the top ten.

Joining Vettel in failing to make the top ten were Daniil Kvyat, Daniel Ricciardo, Kimi Raikkonen and Esteban Ocon.

Q3

Stroll and Perez were the first drivers out of the pit-lane as Team Principal Otmar Szafnauer said: “We sent them out so early to get track position and to get the laps done early.”

The two Racing Point’s were flying with setting purple sectors in Sector One. With Stroll setting a time of 1:16.589 with Perez going two-hundredths faster than his teammate. Bottas got himself into the 1:15’s with Hamilton de-throning the Finn by six-hundredths.

The cars started to get out of the pit-lane again with roughly three minutes left in the session.

Alex Albon improved to sixth, Charles Leclerc improved to seventh but was replaced by Lando Norris in seventh by three-thousands of a second. Carlos Sainz then put his car in seventh out-qualifying his teammate by four-hundredths of a second.

Final Grid For The Race

Mercedes locked down the front row with Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas in first and second respectively with Max Verstappen in third. The Racing Point pairing of Sergio Perez qualified P4 and P5 with Alex Albon joining Stroll on the third row in P6.

The McLaren pair of Carlos Sainz and Lando Norris will start in P7 and P8 with Charles Leclerc and Pierre Gasly rounding off the top ten.

Sebastian Vettel will start in P11 and Daniil Kvyat in P12. Daniel Ricciardo in P13, Kimi Raikkonen in P14 and Esteban Ocon in P15.

The two Haas’ of Kevin Magnussen and Romain Grosjean will start in P16 and P17 respectively with the two Williams of George Russell and Nicholas Latifi in P18 and P19 and Antonio Giovinazzi will start in the back of the grid in P20.

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