Hamilton cruises to Hungarian GP pole

Lewis Hamilton outpaced Mercedes teammate Nico Rosberg by over half a second for his ninth pole in 10 races, his fifth overall at the Hungaroring.

In the Q3 shootout, Rosberg closed on his final attempt on Hamilton, but the Brit followed up with a lap at 1:22.020s to the German’s 1:22.595s en route to an electrifying qualifying performance.

Sebastian Vettel pushed Scuderia Ferrari up to third with a 1:22.739s, while former teammate Daniel Ricciardo shot his Renault-powered Red Bull to fourth, tying the Aussie’s best qualifying effort of the season.

Kimi Raikkonen shrugged off a rough weekend thus far to qualify fifth, three-tenths off of teammate Vettel’s time but ahead of Williams driver Valtteri Bottas to lead an all Finnish third row.

Daniil Kvyatt, Felipe Massa, Max Verstappen and Romain Grosjean round out the remaining top 10.

Sahara Force India appeared to have a chance at Q3 after a stellar FP3 earlier in the day, however, Nico Hulkenberg missed out on the shootout by a mere 0.02s and would settle for 11th.

After advancing into Q2, Fernando Alonso brought out the red flag after his McLaren encountered issues on the exit of Turn 13. The Spaniard got out of the Honda-powered machine and literally pushed his car all the way back to the pits.
He will start tomorrow’s race in 15th.

Alonso’s teammate, Jenson Button, never made it out of Q1 and cited car issues that plagued the former champion’s efforts.