Lewis Hamilton delights home crowd with record pole position!

Lewis Hamilton will line up on pole for his home grand prix for the fourth straight year after a nail-biting qualifying against Ferrari. Sebastian Vettel will line up second with Ferrari teammate Kimi Raikkonen third.

Q1 was stopped as soon as it started, Lance Stroll spinning of at Brooklands into the gravel and was unable to get back out. The session was red flagged but got back underway. Moments later it was his Williams teammate Sergey Sirotkin’s turn to spin into the gravel, the Russian off at Club but able to return to the pitlane.

Vettel was the first to break the track record, a 1:26.5 in his first run put him top of the session. Brendon Hartley, who didn’t take part in qualifying due to the damage to his Toro Rosso after his FP3 crash, was joined on the sidelines by both Williams’, Stoffel Vandoorne and Carlos Sainz.

Q2 got underway and it was Mercedes out first, Hamilton though making a mistake on his first flying lap and had to go again, putting a half lap more on his soft tyres than his rivals. He did eventually go top of the session however, Ferrari trading times with them up to that point.

Red Bull found themselves a fair amount off the pace however, over half a second down on P1 going into the final session.

The dying moments of Q2 fizzled out, possibly because of the high track temperatures, nobody improved their times apart from Pierre Gasly, who only rose to 14th ahead of Marcus Ericsson.

Q3 was the Ferrari vs Mercedes show. First round going to the Scuderia as Hamilton and Vettel the only drivers to dip into the 1:25s, Vettel the fraction faster.

Hamilton was the first to go back out for his second run, a faster preparation lap in the hopes of firing up the tyres for sector one his plan of attack.

He took pole by 0.044s but it was a close call, all his rivals behind him yet to show their hand but it wasn’t enough to depose the Brit from his 76th pole position.