Bottas beats Hamilton to Silverstone pole, Hulkenberg third

Mercedes driver Valtteri Bottas took pole position for the 70th Anniversary Grand Prix at Silverstone, as Racing Point stand-in Nico Hulkenberg starred in third place.

Like in the previous weekend’s British Grand Prix weekend at the same track, Bottas led team-mate Lewis Hamilton in the first two segments of qualifying – but this time he managed to complete the sweep and beat the reigning champion in the all-important Q3, too.

This was despite Hamilton setting the initial pace in Q3 with a 1m25.284s, with Bottas quicker in the second sector but ultimately 0.116s slower across the line.

But after swapping softs for mediums for their second runs, both Mercedes drivers improved their times – and Bottas’s 1m25.154s was enough to beat Hamilton by 0.063s.

Hulkenberg – continuing to sub for Sergio Perez following the Racing Point’s regular second positive COVID-19 test – had been on the cusp of elimination in Q2 after an off at Chapel on his first attempt, but progressed, and was the only other driver to lap within a second of Bottas in the final segment.

Max Verstappen was fourth for Red Bull, and was the only driver to advance out of the second segment on the hard tyres as opposed to the mediums, which means he will start on the C2 compound.

Renault driver Daniel Ricciardo was third after the first run in Q3, but was relegated down to fifth, the Australian alone in using only the mediums in the final segment.

Hulkenberg’s team-mate Lance Stroll was three and a half tenths slower than the German in sixth, ahead of AlphaTauri’s Pierre Gasly and Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc.

The other Red Bull of Alex Albon escaped elimination late on in Q1 but ultimately progressed to the final segment, where he placed penultimate, taking ninth on the grid ahead of McLaren’s Lando Norris.

Esteban Ocon qualified 11th for Renault but is under investigation for impeding Russell in Q1. The Williams driver – who himself made it out of Q1 for the fourth weekend running – described the situation as “mega dangerous”, while Ocon told his engineer Mark Slade: “That wasn’t good, we’ll get penalised for that.”

Sebastian Vettel endured his worst qualifying of the season in 12th, despite a late gamble on the deeply unpopular C4 soft compound in Q2. His late lap put him ahead of McLaren’s Carlos Sainz Jr, his 2021 replacement at Ferrari, and Vettel described it as “all I had”.

Romain Grosjean got a Haas out of Q1 for the first time since the Red Bull Ring rounds, and recorded the team’s best qualifying of the season in 14th place.

AlphaTauri’s Daniil Kvyat was a surprise elimination in Q1, having entered the final minutes of the session eighth on the timing screens.

His decisive Q1 push lap came undone as he reported “something on the floor broke”, and a lack of a late improvement was penalised by track evolution, as he was shuffled down to 16th.

Kevin Magnussen (Haas) and Nicholas Latifi (Williams) were both around seven tenths slower than their team-mates in Q1, and are set to make up the ninth row of the grid.

They will be followed by an all-Alfa Romeo back row, with Antonio Giovinazzi overturning an initial deficit to Kimi Raikkonen to outqualify his team-mate by half a tenth, yet still coming up 0.003s short of Latifi.

Qualifying Results