Lewis Hamilton Secures Pole For 2018 Australian GP With Stunning Last Lap

Published March 24, 2018
Views : 2673
5 min read

Lewis set a good example of what happens when man and machine come together, meanwhile, Bottas’ crash demonstrated the exact opposite

2018 Australian F1 Grand Prix Qualifying

The true pace of a Formula 1 car and its driver on a race weekend can be gauged in Free Practice 3 (FP3), setting a blueprint for the qualifying session that usually starts two hours later. Changing conditions, especially a damp track which forced many teams to run their cars with intermediate tyres early on in the session, meant the times were not indicative of the pace of the 2018 cars. At the end of proceedings though, it was Lewis Hamilton who put his Mercedes Works car on the pole on the last lap of the session, moments after his teammate Valtteri Bottas suffered a major crash in pursuit of a fast lap. The Ferraris of Sebastian Vettel and Kimi Räikkönen were given a clear indication that they were not as close to Mercedes as they had hoped for, at least in terms of qualifying pace.

The sun had come out by the time qualifying began and the track had sufficiently dried off for drivers to show their pace on slick tyres. For a while, it seemed like Ferrari had finally cracked the Mercedes nut, with Kimi setting the fastest lap of Q1 at 1:23.096, but Hamilton seemed to breeze through with a time of 1:22.824. Bottas, though, seemed to have some problems with extracting the best out of his Mercedes, managing only the eighth best time in the session behind Haas’ Romain Grosjean.

What was interesting to see was how the mid- and rear-field of the grid had evolved over 2017. Williams and Force India, who were contending for the ‘best of the rest’ title after the top teams of Mercedes, Ferrari and Red Bull in 2017, seemed to be struggling to maintain that position. Instead, the fight seemed to be between the Renault factory team and the American Haas team.

The expectation was that the backmarkers for this season would be the Sauber team, whose major title sponsorship deal with Ferrari to promote Alfa Romeo would bear fruit only in the long term. Surprisingly, it was neither Marcus Ericsson or rookie Charles Leclerc who occupied the last two grid spots, that instead went to Sergey Sirotkin of Williams and Pierre Gasly of Toro Rosso. At the end of Q1, both the Toro Rosso car, both the Sauber Alfa Romeo cars and the one Williams failed to make it to the next round. The results were especially disheartening for the Toro Rosso team who switched from Renault power units to Honda ones and had good pace during pre-season testing.

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Q2 saw both the Ferraris seemingly matching the speed of Lewis’ Mercedes. Sebastian Vettel set the fastest time of 1:21.944, while Hamilton only managed second. Valtteri Bottas seemed to have found some pace, setting the third fastest time. The Red Bulls driven by local lad Daniel Ricciardo and Dutch Max Verstappen decided to use a different strategy for the race, setting their lap times on the harder ‘Super Soft’ compound rather than the ‘Ultra Soft’ compound used by the majority of the others. Max even managed to slot ahead of Kimi with a time of 1:22.416.

While Renault and Haas continued fighting for the 4th place in the team standings, McLaren had reasons to celebrate their return to relatively better form as compared to the past many years, but their exit at the end of Q2 does not allay fears that their poor form in the past many seasons was only because of the sub-par Honda power unit. In the last lap scramble, it seemed like both the McLarens would make it to Q3, but Renault and Haas cars made sure that did not happen. McLaren (Fernando Alonso, Stoffel Vandoorne) was joined by the Force India team (Sergio Perez, Esteban Ocon) and the lone Williams driven by Lance Stroll in not being able to qualify to fight for the top 10 slots in the starting grid for race day.

Dark clouds had begun to form at the end of Q2, and drivers were eager to set out early on the slicks. Some drivers may have felt a bit more pressure than the others, at least it seemed that way for Valtteri Bottas. After setting a time within hundredths of a second within Hamilton’s in Q2, Valtteri may have felt like he needed to do more. On his flying lap, he went wide into the first corner, and a bit onto the grass leading to the second corner. Not wanting to waste a timed lap, Bottas decided to keep accelerating, but the grass was wet and made his rear lose grip. A spin into the barriers followed, with the car suffering major damage to the front and rear. With the session red flagged and precious minutes remaining after the restart, every driver only had one chance to set their fastest times.

Lewis Hamilton Secures Pole For 2018 Australian GP With Stunning Last Lap

Lewis Hamilton’s lap time chart was on fire with him registering purple (fastest) sector times throughout the lap. After what looked like a flawless lap, Lewis had set a time of 1:21.164, Kimi came second with a lap more than half a second slower at 1:21.828 and a misjudged corner entry saw Vettel take the third spot with a time of 1:21.838. While Max took the fourth spot, his teammate Ricciardo will start from 8th on the grid in spite of being the 5th fastest guy in qualifying courtesy a penalty he incurred during free practice. Haas won the fight in qualifying against Renault, with Kevin Magnussen securing 6th and Romain setting the 7th fastest time. Nico Hulkenberg leads the raid by Renault for the race tomorrow, followed by teammate Carlos Sainz.